Saint still changing lives in 'Teresa's Ecstasy'
NEW YORK (AP) — Beware of having unintended spiritual epiphanies. Begonya Plaza's new play, "Teresa's Ecstasy," is about the unexpected influence of St. Teresa of Avila, a 16th-century Carmelite nun, on modern-day Carlotta, a Spanish writer.
Carlotta (performed with languid grace by Plaza) has been living in New York for three years, but returns to Barcelona to serve her husband with divorce papers. She's also going to Avila to conduct first-hand research for an article she's writing about Teresa, a prolific author who was said to experience ecstatic visions.
The well-written, touching and often funny drama is performing off-Broadway at the Cherry Lane Theatre. The production has an authentic Spanish feeling, partly due to original music by Catalan composer Alberto Carbonell, but mainly from the talkative, casual machismo of Andres, Carlotta's charming, sexist and much older husband.
Will Pomerantz ably directs at a relaxed pace, with all action staged in Andres' Barcelona apartment. Shawn Elliott is outstanding as Andres, somehow managing to make his contrarian character quite appealing most of the time. Brash but also insecure, Andres is rooted in another time, prone to saying things like "A woman has to be beautiful, smell good and not say too much."
Linda Larkin gives a feisty portrayal of Carlotta's editor, Becky, a confident, witty woman who admires Teresa as "a brilliant Jewish feminist writing during the Spanish Inquisition." Carlotta quietly but determinedly stands up to her husband, and all three actors nicely convey a constant undercurrent of tension among themselves.
Andres mocks and demeans almost everything, including Americans in general and Becky in particular, though she jabs right back at him. He gets very worked up about St. Teresa and the Catholic Church, insisting that Teresa was a "lusty saint," and scoffs at the notion of nuns believing they were married to Jesus.
There's plenty of religious history in the play, as well as contemporary feminism. The early 1970s song "Wild World" by Cat Stevens sets up a lovely scene in the first act, when the three dance around gracefully together and nobody is arguing, for a change.
With a lot of wine and a meal of gazpacho that they prepare together after Becky leaves for the night, Andres attempts to woo Carlotta, despite her firmly stated intention to divorce him. Old resentments and regrets are rehashed, and he defends himself at one point by saying, "Men will always be boys with a god complex."
The second act turns more serious, and has many intentionally awkward moments, as Andres and Carlotta are both trying to absorb the "life-changing" epiphany that occurred during her week in Avila with Becky. The most impassioned part of Act 2 is Elliott's touching breakdown as Andres finally accepts the permanent change in Carlotta; it's unlikely he'll be improving his opinion of St. Teresa any time soon.
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Online: http://www.cherrylanetheatre.org/onstage/teresas-ecstasy
