Blind Mouth Singing

World Premiere ” In an unnamed Caribbean village, a stern Bernarda Alba-esque matriarch tries to control her troubled clan: a spinster sister who ministers to the syphilitic, a slovenly son with violent tendencies, a younger and more poetic son obsessed with a figure in the family well who might be a ghost, his long-lost father, or both. Director Loy Arcenas brings some cunning flourishes to this Teatro Vista world premiere by Jorge Ignacio Cortinas, but the script feels like borrowed finery from Lorca, Ibsen, and many Latin American magic realists. Deja vu sets in early, though Lisa Tejero’s performance as kindhearted Aunt Bolivia is breathtaking” – Kerry Reid, Chicago Reader 2/17/06

“When a play arrives with the title “Blind Mouth Singing,” it’s a good bet you’re in for a surreal journey. And so it is with Jorge Ignacio Cortinas’ new drama, which received its world premiere Tuesday night by Teatro Vista. Part heterosexual fairy tale, part homoerotic fable and part anguished meditation on the way people often remain trapped even when they manage to escape, Cortinas’ play is rich in mood and shot through with some vividly written scenes and characters. But the whole thing feels derivative of every magical realist “dream play” ever penned. And despite some strong acting and wonderfully evocative elements of design, the individual parts of the play are more successful than the whole. Teatro Vista, which is now celebrating its 15th anniversary (and also has the distinction of being the only Equity Latino theater company in the Midwest), certainly has a feel for this sort of work. And the actors, under the direction of Loy Arcenas (who did such a wonderful job with the Victory Gardens production of “The Romance of Magno Rubio” a couple of seasons back), capture the play’s sense of isolation, stifled emotion and a touch of madness. But there is something about the overall rhythm of the storytelling that is choppy and unsatisfying. The place is a small, hilly village not far from a seaport town, somewhere in Latin America. The time might be the 1940s if you date things by an old-fashioned gramophone that sits in the home where the tale unfolds. That home belongs to an embittered matriarch known only as Mother of the Late Afternoon (played by Laura Crotte, who displays a real feel for her character’s mix of despotism and despair). Abandoned years earlier by her husband, Mother now rules the roost with a fearsome negativity and attempts to quell whatever rebellion she fears may be brewing under her own roof. As it happens, she only knows the half of it. To begin with, there are her adolescent sons — the boorish, devious Gordi (Peter Fitzsimmons, with just the right mix of the slovenly, the sly and the stupid), and his softer, dreamier younger brother, Reiderico (Marcus Castillo, who captures his character’s gentleness and helplessness), whom Gordi torments and bullies. Reiderico has developed a protective life of his own — communing with a seductive alter ego, Lucero (the charismatic, serpentinelike Marvin Edward Quijada), who lives at the bottom of a well and is much more powerful and self-confident. Lucero is a trickster above all — the man Reiderico loves, admires and yearns to be (and to be with), and the two men ultimately trade identities. Lucero may, in fact, be the ghost of Reiderico’s long-lost father, as he was in his youth. Or he may just be the classic sexual adventurer — seducing and betraying Reiderico and then leaving him in the dust. Also part of this household is Mother’s younger sister, Bolivia (the always wonderful Lisa Tejero, at once earthy and dream-filled here). She, too, has secrets and secret desires. She has begun heading off each week to the open-air market in town, where she disguises herself as “the spinster of Calcutta” and treats men suffering from syphilis. In this way she earns money and a bit of independence, and fuels her fantasy of running away to “the city.” Knives are sharpened, cigars are smoked, bags are packed, a lost love is momentarily recaptured, memories are tossed down a well, a hurricane sweeps past, freedom is sought, murder is committed and lost souls remain lost. There is something mysterious, blackly funny and twisted about it all, but too often the storytelling feels more enigmatic and self-consciously poetic than necessary. There also are far too many endings appended to this play. Brian Sidney Bembridge’s wonderfully hand-crafted wood set — with a grand sense of landscape, a working well and a road to nowhere — could not be better. And it is enhanced by the exotic soundscape created by Mikhail Fiksel and Andre Pluess, the stormy lighting of Jesse Klug and the homespun textures of Christine Pascual’s costumes. But too often, atmosphere trumps action” – Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun Times 2/9/06

“Stare at your own reflection long enough and you might catch a glimpse of your personality that you kept mostly hidden from view. In Jorge Ignacio Cortinas’ “Blind Mouth Singing,” receiving its world premiere in a Teatro Vista production at the Chopin Theatre, a teenager named Reiderico, timid and dreamy, spends hours gazing at his watery image in the well next to his home. It is no wonder he seeks solace down there; up on land, a muted chaos rules the roost.Through it all, Reiderico cultivates his reflection in the well ? a bolder, savvier version of himself ? who eventually crawls up, hops out and trades places with his mirror image. That act of climbing out of the well is akin to coming out of the closet ? coming out to himself, anyway, if not to anyone else. This new Reiderico eventually finds the will to leave his rural Caribbean existence and its stifling family dynamics for what the play’s characters refer to simply as City. (When your day-to-day is filled with dust and manual labors and night roads as “black as bibles,” it doesn’t really matter what metropolis you seek out, does it? It’s all just City.) The problem is, his old self is never far behind; even with newfound confidence, insecurities have a nasty way of lingering about, and Reiderico can never escape his true self.There’s quite a bit of metaphor going on in “Blind Mouth,” but if theatrical undertakings are suited for anything, it is metaphor, and Cortinas, a playwright-in-residence at Hartford Stage in Connecticut, is a shrewd writer. There’s a droll, constantly surprising humor woven into the text that gives the play a modern energy despite its unspecified era. (The costumes suggest the setting is sometime during the early years of the 20th Century). The Teatro Vista production is executed with a certain amount of sophistication that is well-suited to Cortinas’ sensibility. Were it a third shorter, the play would be more powerful, like a short story that wastes no strokes. As it is, the plot sags occasionally on its way to metaphorland. But you could be headed to worse places” – Nina Metz, Chicago Tribune 2/6/06