12 March 2005: Machado, The Cook
Hartford Stage. Directed by Michael John Garcás
An interesting but ultimately unsatisfying play by Eduardo Machado about a cook, Gladys, in a well-to-do Cuban family who, when the fall of Batista sends Castro into power and the family has to flee, promises to stay in the house and hold it for the eventual return of the daughter of the family, Rosa. Much food preparation goes on on stage in the course of the play, hors d’oeuvres and tamales figuring prominently — tamales, Gladys explains, were the food of the indigenous people of Cuba. But she doesn’t comment on the fact that those people were almost totally wiped out by the Spanish conquistadors, who then proceeded to import thousands of African slaves to make Cuba the center of the world’s sugar industry. Thus the explanation in a chronology of Cuba printed in the program. So food is at the center — or at the epicenter — of this play, but its significance is never really explained. Machado in fact has the disappointing habit of raising interesting issues and then somehow failing to confront them. Characters are too closely tied to plot; they are more functionaries than individuals. When they speak, they are often over-articulate, almost as if they are given lines straight from the dramatist’s scenario.
Machado has a great interest in betrayal, and it manifests itself in the play in various ways. Gladys’s husband, Carlos, a somewhat dull-minded individual who was brought in as the family chauffeur when she was taken on as cook, gets caught up in the spirit of the revolution and uses it to justify his macho behavior of taking a mistress and fathering a daughter. Gladys accuses him of cheating on her and refuses to sleep with him from this point — but she still continues to feed him and provide his coffee. This is because she has made a promise to him, she says, to be his wife. Vows are important to keep, she believes, and her promise to hold onto the house is kept even when she must abandon Julio, her gay cousin, to the cruel depredations of Carlos, who says he will protect Julio only if Gladys allows him to move his mistress and daughter into the house. Gladys, feeling betrayed, refuses, and Carlos makes a sinister phone call resulting in the cousin’s being apprehended and sent to a camp, where he later dies. Before Julio departs, he screams in pain because Gladys will not protect him and accuses her of betraying him. She remains adamant. And so there is a curious calculus in the play that has to do with betrayal and promises kept and broken. Wonderful potential here. But stay tuned.
In Act III, the daughter of Rosa, Elana (played by the same actress, Joselin Reyes, who is not fully believable in either role and who somehow seems awkward and reluctant), returns to the house. There is a nasty scene in which Elana, who has come as a tourist at her own husband’s behest to see the house her mother lived in, tells Gladys that her mother hates her — they had had a touch