'Boleros for the Disenchanted' at the Goodman is Rivera's tribute to mothers everywhere
THEATER REVIEW | "Boleros for the Disenchanted"
Taken from the June 30, 2009 issue of the Chicago Tribune
By Chris Jones
Like most sons, male playwrights often come to the belated realization of all their mothers did for them. The things she endured. The sacrifices she made. And if the father of the house had some of those typical macho insensitivities, proclivities and weaknesses—and evidence suggests many playwrights' fathers did—then the honest telling of her story requires a lot more than an uncomplicated love letter.
And Jose Rivera is too fine a playwright to pen an uncomplicated play.
Rivera's "Boleros for the Disenchanted," which opened Monday night at the Goodman Theatre after several other major regional productions, is the sweet story of the courtship and marriage of his own parents. He tells their tale first by focusing on the start of their marriage—a courtship set in 1950s Puerto Rico, a world softened by sun and flowers but hardened by the blows and curses of insecure macho men. And then, after intermission, the play switches to the twilight years of the marriage, when the couple has moved to the harsher country of the United States, sensual dreams have been overtaken by the messiness of old age, and confessions of past weaknesses spill out like bodily fluids.
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HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Dual roles create a singular sensation
THEATER REVIEW | Rom-com's directing, acting superb
Taken from the June 30, 2009 issue of the Chicago Sun-Times
By Hedy Weiss
Love, marriage, machismo, immigration, generational shifts, thwarted dreams, sickness, aging and death. These are all crucial ingredients in "Boleros for the Disenchanted," the profound romantic comedy by Jose Rivera now in a gorgeously rendered production at the Goodman Theatre. Yet this simple list of themes cannot begin to suggest the depth of feeling and insight that give this play its undeniable emotional power and heat. Nor can it come close to describing how director Henry Godinez, in the most superb work of his career, has guided his cast of six virtuosic, Broadway-ready actors—all playing cleverly devised dual roles—to infuse Rivera's quasi-autobiographical story with such palpable joy, sadness, authenticity and heart.
In the beginning, Rivera gives us a 20th century Puerto Rican version of a Shakespearean romantic comedy -- the sort of story in which a smart, strong-willed, naive young woman must go through many trials before realizing who she should marry. Beguiling and funny, with flashes of darkness amid its "old-fashioned values," the act builds to a breathtaking climax finessed by way of Linda Buchanan's ingenious set design. The play's second half then proceeds to give us one of those time-lapse transformations that says all you need to know, and more, about our unavoidable erosion along the road to mortality.
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