My overall impression
I loved this show in so many different ways and for so many different reasons.
From an audience perspective, it is an intensely emotional, moving, horrifying, funny, sweet, roller-coaster of an experience to see this show. One of the most powerful shows I’ve seen in a good while.
From a theatre-making perspective, I love this show for it’s skillful blend of filmed elements and of props and costumes to bring a whole life, a whole world to the stage. Also for its beautifully-crafted script. And for the energetic staging— Dulce Maria fills the stage and the blocking beautifully communicates movement through different times and places.
From an acting perspective, the abandon with which Dulce Maria portrays Chela and the other characters is awe-inspiring. She transitions so perfectly clearly from one person to the next and gives each character so much life and portrays them with such attention to detail, I had to remind myself that it was all only one person. Her energy never flagged, her focus never wavered. Her performance is a tour de force. I’ve never used that phrase to describe a performance before, but it was the only thing that fit.
From a personal perspective, I know there is a great tendency when you have lived through awfulness and found some happiness in the present, to want to put it away and let it drift off into the past. So I can only imagine the love and strength it would take for mother and daughter to sit down and talk through the awful parts; to face the darkness and to take that beast of a story and transform it into a work of art and for the daughter to live her mother’s story on the stage for everyone to see. It must be cathartic. It must be beautiful and redemptive. It must be hellish and awful. It must be… I can’t even guess what else the journey is for them, but I am grateful that it ended up here, on stage at HFF. And that I got to see it.
