By Venus Zarris
Playwright Jose Rivera’s Chicago Premiere of Boleros for the Disenchanted explodes out of the gate with one of the most powerfully engaging first scenes to come along in years. Not because of sex, violence or spectacle, but rather because of completely realized characters in exchanges that go from humor, to passion, to rage, to sympathy, while encompassing subtly beguiling epiphanies of love and sadness.
It opens on a heartbroken daughter lamenting about her unfaithful fiancé to her mother. Her Mom comforts her with a hysterical polemic about marriage.
“But you love Papa.” Flora says to her mother.
“Of course I love him, the way Jesus loves his cross.” She replies.
“You’re not planning on speaking at the wedding?” asks the daughter.
Enter the drunken father, embarrassed and enraged by the scandal that this has brought to his family. He is volatile and confrontational but with wit and tenderness the mother transforms his anger into warmth and love.
The reason this is extraordinary is because we move from fearing and disliking this man to empathizing and caring for him all within one brief but emotionally charged exchange. This is the genius of Rivera, and it is evident and captivating from start to finish.
With as good an ensemble as can be found on any stage, director Henry Godinez crafts this production with as much skill and care as Rivera has crafted this lyrically lovely script. He has a command of the Latino experience, rooted in family, tradition and church, combined with the ability to translate this authenticity to universally accessible drama. No one is an outsider looking in, but rather we are all included on this life’s journey of the joys and pitfalls of love.
Act one brings our couple together. Elizabeth Ledo delivers a super charged Flora, steadfast in her faith and personal conviction almost to a fault yet yielding to love with sweetness and childlike vulnerability. Her performance blazes across the first act like a shooting star in a sky that already dazzles with the brilliance of amazing performances.
Felix Solis and Joe Minoso are splendid in their respective parts, both displaying profound depth and bravado. Lisa Fernandez is delightful and flirtatious. But it is Sandra Marquez and Rene Rivera who bring the story home, as the mother and father in act one and then as our newlyweds-grown-old in act two. The chemistry of the entire cast is exceptional but Marquez and Rivera create something truly rare and wonderful.
Jose Rivera has written a play that brims with the painful honesty, brutal betrayals, irreverent humor and redemptive love of our collective human experience. Director Henry Godinez, his incomparable ensemble and gifted design team brings this to life with a production that you can’t take you’re your eyes off of. You will savor ever moment as Boleros for the Disenchanted is quite simply brilliant theater that should not be missed.
4 STARS
(“Boleros for the Disenchanted” runs through July 26 at The Goodman Theatre, 170 North Dearborn Street. 312-443-3800.)
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