Curse of the Puerto Ricans @ Bishop Arts Theatre Center
—Teresa Marrero
Some reviews are easier to write than others. Why? Because while my heart goes out to the courageous artists involved in every single production (it takes courage to expose your soul out there on the stage!), not every effort works one hundred percent. This is the case with the Bishop Arts Theatre Center production of Curse of the Puerto Ricans. Mind you, dear reader, I am a theater specialist, which means I have seen thousands of plays over the 30-plus years of my career. We theater critics are not the “regular” audience—and while this or that play might not work for me, it may well touch and engage a broader audience.
Let´s begin with a huge positive: kudos to Bishop Arts for recruiting a mostly Puerto Rican, Latiné or Afrolatiné team of artists. Playwright Rosa Fernandez, the director, Dr. Marta Torres, and actors Mies Quatrino (Julia Rodriguez), Ruth Marquez (Mami-Milagros Rodriguez), and Tamika Sanders (Millie Rodriguez) all self-identify as Puerto Rican or Afrolatina. In their program bios Carrie Viera (¨Baby¨ Rodriguez) and Roger Pena (Nene) do not self-identify racially or culturally.
This play easily fits into the tradition of parlor drama, which by the way is not exclusively a U.S. theatrical tradition (as stated by the playwright), but rather has its roots in Victorian England during the mid-nineteenth century. A parlor drama focuses on the interior spaces of the home, usually the kitchen or a living area—interior spaces often inhabited primarily by women. We have all seen many parlor dramas, including the well-known TV series Friends.
In Curse of the Puerto Ricans, the entire action is set in a Bronx working class kitchen, around a prominent center stage dining table. (Movement around the bulky table is quite limiting; one wonders if there could be another way of staging the play.) Julia, the middle daughter, is usually there, since she has taken up the role of caretaker for her younger sister, Baby, and her infirm and complaining mother.
What, then, are the events and issues at hand in this parlor drama?
It is Christmas Eve, and the Rodriguez family is preparing to gather for the traditional Noche Buena dinner. Millie, the older sister, has just arrived from studying and living in Puerto Rico for the past five years; she’s had no contact with the family during this time. All sorts of dirty laundry and recriminations surface: accusations of Millie abandoning the family, of behaving selfishly in pursuing a degree, of being eager to get away from the barrio (and the toxic family dynamic).
The other prodigal return is that of Julia’s onetime boyfriend Nene, apparently gone for ten years to get away from his passive mother and abusive father—the same sort of toxicity. He too is blamed for “abandoning” his own family. The clincher here is that he has returned to ask Julia to leave her home, marry him and move to California. Mind you, they have not communicated in 10 years when he suddenly pops up.
I am not sure in what world this could possibly happen and be believable. Ten years of silence! Furthermore, there is absolutely no chemistry between Nene and Julia. Nene comes across as a rather weak, whispering man; Julia constantly avoids any sort of physical contact with him. She reiterates that her family needs her and she cannot possibly leave. Julia plays the peacemaker, the caretaker—but we’re not sure how genuine her “giving” is.
In the second half of the play we do see Nene and Julia attempt to revive the good old days by dancing a rather stiff-legged salsa number. Disclosure of a personal pet peeve: if salsa or any kind of Latin or Afro Latino dance is being staged, please hire a dance/movement coach. It is painful to witness great salsa music (and the entire musical score is first-rate and genuine Puerto Rican music!) danced poorly.
On the plus side, playwright Rosa Fernandez gives us some truly funny dialogue and at times some heart-wrenching truths.
Ruth Marquez gives a stellar performance as Mami, the center of the household. From her body language to her Spanish phrasing, this role makes us laugh, hate her, empathize and eventually understand her. She comes across as authentic.
Another strong performance comes from Tamika Sanders as the elder sister Millie. A bit preachy at times, she gives the audience a lesson in Puerto Rican colonialist theory and the reason for the curse part of the title.
Carrie Viera as Baby rocks her role as the 17-year-old younger sibling, an outspoken sin pelos en la lengua (no holds barred) character. Her robotic movements as she rejects Millie’s reasoning/ excuse for leaving when the family most needed her was, for me, a highlight of this play. Brilliant. The “let’s have it out” brawl between the two sisters gave way to some soulful truths and reckoning for the entire family: nobody appreciates Julia as the sacrificial servant; Baby comes out as a spoiled brat; Mami is a self-indulgent, hypochondriacal matriarch; and Millie is the selfish one who got away.
Who’s left to talk trash about? Well, there’s always Papi, the drunken, absent father around whom much of the discussion centers. Not to spoil the ending, but it comes as a surprise, since nothing in the development of the plot foreshadows it. Think of Ibsen´s Nora in A Doll’s House (1879), and you’re on the right track.
Returning to my background as a theater critic, a university educator, and specifically, a Latiné theater specialist since the mid-1980s, I feel compelled to ask: Are there no other stories to be told besides stories of blaming and shaming? Blaming the one (usually the young woman) who wants to leave the barrio to get an education is nothing new. We saw this story line worked out way back, in Josefina Lopez’1987 play Real Women Have Curves, and more recently in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights, just to name two of many examples. Must our young college-bound Hispanic women continue to see themselves represented in the role of the sellout? Are there not other stories, stories of success, to be told about this sort of experience? And as far are the issue of the drunken, absent, no-good father, must we as cultural Hispanics continue to add fuel to a stereotype? Are there not stories of good, supportive fathers to be told?
This is, of course, a question for playwrights, but also for producing organizations.
I understand that each generation faces its own struggle and identity formation crisis. It is unavoidable. However, we as theater-makers need to be aware of how our work can unwittingly perpetuate stereotypes—and perhaps seek out different voices and material.
Yet I will return to my opening lines in saying that despite my reservations as a theater critic about the story line and staging of the play, the Saturday matinee audience seemed to genuinely enjoy Curse of the Puerto Ricans.
(Teresa Marrero is Senior Professor of Latin American and Latiné Theater at the University of North Texas. She teaches in the Spanish Department.)
WHEN: Through August 28
WHERE: Bishop Arts Theatre Center, Oak Cliff, Dallas
