Hello Friends,
“First we will have to choose a dream. And we have to choose a meeting place in this dream…” If in your mind’s eye you can go back to the romantic time of dancing, gambling, palm trees, and lapping up the life of luxury in the stylish and exotic yet not so distant Havana, you are half way on your journey into the lavish but lonesome world in The Color of Desire. Published in 2010 by the Cuban American, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, Nilo Cruz, The Color of Desire dances rhythmically amongst the love story between people and the love story of Cuba.
Set in the 1960’s at the start of Havana’s revolution, The Color of Desire explores the whirlwind of an island on the cusp of change. As a reader, you feel the tension of people trying to cling on to the magic they experienced as it all is unraveling before their eyes, while life as they knew it was shifting with the Revolution. With an elegant flow of language and a firm grasp on humanity, The Color of Desire exposes what people will do for love, both to find new love and recapture old loves, be it with another person or with their home. As the reader, you ask yourself, what happens when life as we know it changes, how do you drastically shift your expectations and learn to live in a whole new way? How do you learn to live in a shell of the life or play back old fantasies just to survive your own deepening heartache?
As an actress, it is interesting for me to review a written play without ever having seen it performed. Usually, we review plays that we have seen, not just read, however, when the play is entitled The Color of Desire, it is impossible to not be drawn to it. The language and color that Cruz writes with allows these images to jump off the page at you in such a way that you are not a reader but you are a spectator with a front row seat.
“It’s coming! And faster than we speak. It’s revolting how everything can change from one day to the other, and what shocks me…what shocks me the most is the vulgar transformation.” This quote encapsulates the urgency that Cruz infused into this play. The audience gets to look through the lens of both modest, working Cubans and wealthy Americans who have made a temporary home for themselves in Cuba. If theatre is the suspension of disbelief, then The Color of Desire can possibly be looked at as a play within a play, as the characters explore the world of make believe and denial while they play pretend with each other to forget that harsh reality of what is happening around them. Their game of pretend and deep need for diversion is so real at times, the characters in this play seem to exist within the blurred boundary of reality and fantasy.
“In the room of darkness where you fill the abyss, and give it a name, a form…”
The Color of Desire is a passionate hurricane that takes in its path a desperate longing for an escape into something new and unknown as well as wanting to grab onto something that’s fleeting or already gone. Desire is defined as “a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen.” Desire itself can all too easily lead to desperation. In a state of despair, it is almost limitless what someone will do to obtain the object of their desire. Cruz effortlessly weaves through the contrast of love and loss, hope and despair, old and new, and familiar and exotic; all under the tropical umbrella of the romantic Cuba as it is slipping away in a style that is so palpable you can almost get drunk off it’s sweet rum.
“Hey, where are you going, what do I have to do to meet you in a dream?”
On a special note, Nilo Cruz won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play, Anna in the Tropics, making him the first Latino with that honor, paving the way for multicultural playwrights and artists the USA. I sincerely hope that my reading of this great piece was not a short lived fling, but I will one day see this play performed, or it would be a dream come true to even one day perform it myself! I do hope you have a chance to go back in time to this brief and romantic error of Cuba in the 50’s and fall in love with Cruz’s words the way that I have.
Live, Love, Learn,