The play "Lorca in a Green Dress" is like the poet's work itself: It dips you in olive oil and throws you to the moon.
Directed by Valli Marie Riviera and written by Nilo Cruz, the first Hispanic playwright to win the Pulitzer Prize, the play follows the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca's journey from death and into a purgatory of sorts.
It opened last weekend and runs the next two weekends at Vortex Theatre at 2004 1/2 Central Ave. S.E., with the theater entrance on Buena Vista Drive.
After being shot once in the lung and twice in the buttocks under Franco's dictatorship, Lorca goes to a holding room where he must meditate on his life for 40 days. This greenroom is full of actors playing actors all claiming to be Lorca.
Each represents Lorca as the outspoken poet, as a woman, as the poet's desires and as his childhood dreams. The flamenco dancer plays his spirit.
"Guess who you play?" says an actor.
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"The moon?" asks the main Lorca character.
"You play the dead poet," the actor replies.
They rebuild his life memory by memory. Flamenco guitarist Mario Febres plays accompanying music offstage. The cast does some songs in English and some in Spanish. Michael Ali Ellis, who plays the main Lorca, is blond and blue-eyed, which I thought was weird at first, but as everyone came to be Lorca as the play continued, I became less hung up on the casting decisions and settled into the surreal reality unfolding before me.
One of the best elements comes as the actors make bizarre movements and gestures that don't directly pair up to their speaking lines. After each sequence of recalling scenes from his life, it goes back to the scene of his death in the physical world, where he was shot in front of a truck. Each time a different actor plays this out.
"Lorca in a Green Dress" is full of illuminated lines like, "We have drawers full of photographic negatives of your dreams," and, "We shot him in the ass, the way you'd shoot a Communist faggot."
The urgency of the play is broken up with sunny scenes wherein Lorca is playing with his friends and love-triangle compatriots Salvador Dali and his only sister Ana Marie Dali. They love Lorca and feel duller when he isn't around.
The set is minimal and intimate, overcast in green light,
You'll leave the show with a head full of poetry.
'Lorca in a Green Dress'
Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.
Sundays, 6 p.m.
$15/$10 students
Through May 2
Vortex Theatre
2004 1/2 Central Avenue S.E.
For reservations, call 505-247-8600.
