'Boleros' a loving ode to long-term matrimony
The marriage adages of "for richer or for poorer" and "in sickness and in health" get hammered home in José Rivera's 2008 drama "Boleros for the Disenchanted." This funny and sentimental play receives a solid Chicago premiere under Henry Godinez's strong direction at the Goodman Theatre, following previous productions in New Haven, Conn., Boston and San Francisco.
Audiences who grimaced through Rivera's last Goodman outing, the ham-fisted 2007 War-on-Terror allegory "Massacre (Sing to Your Children)," will be pleasantly surprised (and relieved) at how much more accessible "Boleros" is in style and tone.
Far from Rivera's acclaimed works of magical realism like "Cloud Tectonics" and "References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot," "Boleros" is grounded more in realism as it embraces sitcom-style hilarity in Act I, while doing all it can to tug at the tear ducts by showing life's harsh realities in Act II.
Drawn from Rivera's own parents' courtship and marriage, "Boleros" begins in Puerto Rico in the early 1950s before jumping ahead 39 years to Daleville, Ala., near the U.S. Army base Fort Rucker.
Everything looks idyllic enough at the start, thanks to the warm lighting of designer Joseph Apelt and Linda Buchanan's brightly colored set filled with blooming plants and aqua- and lemon-painted houses. Yet the heroine's love life and future independence is in crisis.
Flora (an appealing Elizabeth Ledo) is determined to get out from the clutches of her overprotective (and sometimes abusive) parents, namely the anti-American (and frequently drunk) patriarch Don Fermin (a to-the-point René Rivera) and his common-sense wife Dona Milla (the ever-reliable Sandra Marquez).
At at the same time, Flora is so fiercely Catholic that she is determined to remain a virgin until her wedding night - though she fears becoming a spinster, especially since she's now past the age of 20.
Flora's marital escape route encounters a major pothole when small-town gossips spy her suave fiancee, Manuelo (a comical Felix Solis), sporting around with other women. When Manuelo's hilarious explanation about the nature of men fails to satisfy Flora, she ditches him and takes some time to nurse her broken heart by visiting her "big city" and U.S.A.-obsessed cousin, Petra (a very funny and fiery Liza Fernandez).
By chance, Flora meets a National Guardsman named Eusebio (Joe Minoso, who does well playing a big, tenderhearted guy). After weeks of nervous flirtatious visits and many boleros played on the jukebox, Eusebio gets the courage to ask Flora to become his wife and to build a new life together in the United States.
Like many parents' oft-told courtship stories, the one Rivera depicts in "Boleros" has a mythologized loveliness that happily sweeps you along. Rivera keeps the comic zingers coming with a speedy Neil Simon-like regularity, though his attempts to add in the historical context of the era (often anti-American sentiments spewed with bile by Don Fermin) feel clumsily jammed in.
Things take a literal turn for the worse at the end of Act I (thanks to Buchanan's massive revolving set) as we shift to a tiny apartment in 1992 to find an elderly Flora (now played by a grayed-up Sandra Marquez) taking care of a bedridden Eusebio (now René Rivera, with heavier age makeup).
This is where the title's disenchantment comes in as caretaker Flora and patient Eusebio live practically like shut-ins. Since their many children are spread out around the country and overseas with the military, Flora and Eusebio can't rely on family for nearby support.
A major relationship crisis breaks out when Eusebio has an angelic dream and requests a very worldly wise priest (Solis, in a cool-as-a-cucumber performance) to administer last rites.
The past comes back to haunt Flora and Eusebio as they second-guess their attempts to live the American dream. Would they have been better off avoiding the country's racism, low-paying jobs and contrasting cultural values by staying in Puerto Rico?
It's the unflinching realism of Rivera's second act that highlights just what a lifelong marriage commitment entails for this faith-tested couple. While Rivera throws in a last-minute plot twist that unexpectedly drives "Boleros" into a politicized zone to rally right-wing religious conservatives around it, the play is otherwise a universal examination of young love and late-life regrets that pushes all the right emotional buttons for audiences to savor and enjoy.
"Boleros for the Disenchanted"
Rating: 3 stars
Location: Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St., Chicago
Showtimes: 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays; 8 p.m. Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sundays; Also 2 p.m. July 9 and 16; no performances July 3, 4, 7 or in the evening of July 19
Running time: Two hours, with intermission
Tickets: $25-$70
Parking: $19 in Government Center Self Park
Box office: (312) 443-3800 or goodmantheatre.org
Rating: Some talk of sex and dismemberment