Chumbale (Every Love Bird Needs a Nest)

When you consider that Facebook is banned in some communist countries today, Chumbale, an area premiere, is wickedly funny, and extraordinarily brave. Read more

Our Lady of the Clouds

Aristides Vargas, who was born in Argentina but lives in Ecuador, takes us on a jaunty, if not disjointed journey that evokes that hollow, pit-in-the-stomach feeling that comes from arriving in strange, unfamiliar places. Read more

The Cat and the Seagull

Every storyteller knows that a good fable has a moral. The Cat and the Seagull has a beautiful one, loaded with enough imaginative power to spellbind adults as well as pre-schoolers for 50 magical minutes. Read more

Fan of a Single Woman (Abanico de Soltera)

Whether Andrea Julia is fluttering a fan, talking to a doll, or writhing in agony with a wire sculpture, this chameleon-like, Argentine actress embodies Federico Garcia Lorca, Read more

The American Insomnia (El Insomnio Americano)

Before a packed house at the Gunston Arts Center, Saulo Garcia, a one-man miracle takes us on a jittery joy-ride representing a cast of thousands— the immigrants who trade in their Latino identities for the American Dream. Read more

Rosa de dos Aromas (Two-Scented Rose)

Two young women sit, waiting,  on a bench outside a prison. They make friendly small talk until both discover they love the same man, Marco Antonio Lazur. All at once, they’re enemies. Read more

Kick-Butt Women

Kick-Butt Women (Mujeres al Poder)
based on the play, Lady Godiva by Jean Canolle
Adapted and directed by Mario Marcel
Produced by Teatro De La Luna
Reviewed by Rosalind Lacy

Let’s hear it for acts of common sense and defiance that change history. The original Lady Godiva myth may not be based on an actual event. But let’s pretend, as the French playwright Jean Canolle did, that the myth really happened. Read more

Doubt (La Duda)

Doubt (La Duda)
By John Patrick Shanley
Adapted and directed by Matilda Corral
Produced by I.E. Productions C.A., from Venezuela for Teatro De La Luna’s Eleventh International Festival of Hispanic Theater
Reviewed by Rosalind Lacy

What universalizes John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt (La Duda), about a priest suspected of pedophilia, are the adaptations director Matilda Corral makes. We are in a Catholic school in Venezuela instead of an Irish-Italian school in Northeastern United States. But the explosive issues and controversy are the same. Read more

Meat Prices Rising

Meat Prices Rising (Subió la Carne)
By Argento, Pazos, Pesqueira
Directed by Carlo Argento
Produced by Teatro de la Luna
Reviewed by Rosalind Lacy

Meat Prices Rising (Subió la Carne) has an enticing, juicy title. This loosely constructed cabaret act seems to be saying: okay, the economy is shot to hell, so let’s make fun of everything sacred. And that’s exactly what two tremendously talented Argentine actors, Claudio Pazos and Francisco Pesqueira, and their director, Carlo Argento, do as they impersonate a multitude of characters, sing with operatic voices at highpoint moments, and make us laugh at such fears as a failing economy or runaway inflation. (Argentina is well-known for government debt and inflations that resulted in 2001 food riots.) Read more

The Hand

The Hand (La Mano)
by playwright German Madrid
directed by Antonia Castillo
produced by Carro de Baco, Barcelona, Spain, and Teatro De La Luna
reviewed by Rosalind Lacy

The Hand (La Mano), by German Madrid, Spain’s gift to Teatro de la Luna’s Eleventh International Festival of Hispanic Theater is a mordantly witty puzzler, the kind of breathtaking one-act that’s simply ingenious. Read more

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