Access Atlanta > Arts > Our Reviews > Archives > 2005 > January > 28 > Entry
At the Alliance: ‘Day of the Kings’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “Day of the Kings.”
Daphne Greaves’ “Day of the Kings,” winner of the Alliance Theatre’s first national Graduate Playwriting Competition, is an exquisitely crafted drama about human bondage, secret passions and the hysteria of social change on the hothouse island of Cuba in the early 1800s.
There’s nary a whiff of cigar smoke, gunfire or Communist manifesto in Greaves’ lush account of the upstairs-downstairs world of wealthy planters and slave laborers. But as the house of Hector Nunez starts to collapse and a woman doctor posing as a man is forced to shed her mask, you feel the winds of change blowing over the paradisal island. (And in a region where cotton was once king, the story’s resonance is unmistakable.)
 With its very title —- a reference to the Feast of the Epiphany, when Cuba’s slaves are allowed to enjoy one Mardi Gras-style day of freedom and celebration —- “Day of the Kings” hints of things to come: the slow crumble of the power play between Cuba and Spain, blacks and whites, women and men.
Greaves, a recent graduate of the Juilliard School’s playwriting program, uses gorgeous poetry and a structural device that allows us to peek into her dichotomous Havana milieu during the Day of Kings, circa 1817, 1819 and 1820. She keeps her sprawling canvas intimate by focusing on a triptych of tempestuous illicit affairs —- and one troubled marriage.
Dr. Faber (Katie Firth), a French doctor’s widow, has disguised herself as a man so that she can practice medicine legally. When her assistant, Diego (Sandro Isaack), realizes that this “pretty man” is really a woman, the two engage in a turbulent affair.
 Meanwhile, the fortune of Nunez (Triney Sandoval) is on the brink of collapse. His teenage daughter Blanca (Maria Parra) is in love with her slave Esteban (Theroun Patterson). And his mixed-race mistress Cecilia (Crystal Porter) is insisting that their illegitimate son be baptized as white so that he can enjoy the privileges of this socially rigid society. No wonder Hector is in constant gastric pain.
What elevates this sexy tale from the status of bodice-ripper is Greaves’ formal manipulation of irony and ideas. She insists on realism, even as the action has a hallucinogenic quality. She has the uncanny ability to balance as many as three plates at once, connecting simultaneous scenes with interlocking dialogue.
This is essentially Faber’s story, but the themes of mothers wanting better lives for their children and the tyranny of men are common threads. Esteban’s mother has arranged it so that he can work indoors instead of in the fields. When Blanca teaches him to write, she spells out his dying mother’s name: C-a-r-a. He bursts into tears, and later, armed with the words of famous philosophers, he incites slave revolts.
Like Lynn Nottage’s “Intimate Apparel,” “Kings” traces the emergence of the modern woman within a specific historical perspective. Like Nilo Cruz’s “Anna in the Tropics,” “Kings” creates an erotically charged meditation on the marriage of literature and romance. (For Cruz, it was “Anna Karenina”; for Greaves, it’s Calderon de la Barca’s “Life Is a Dream,” which Blanca shares with Esteban.)
Scott Bradley’s re-creation of a gilded Havana villa and Mariann S. Verheyen’s wonderfully detailed costumes are stunning to the eye.
 A few quibbles: Some actors’ accents seem to come and go. The chemistry between Faber and Diego, and Blanca and Esteban, is not nearly as steamy as it ought to be. And because Faber, as the narrator, tells us about her dalliance with Diego before it actually happens, the story gets ahead of itself, and his realization of her true identity loses its punch.
Firth threatens to turn Faber into a kind of bland and sallow Katharine Hepburn, but once you get over her lugubrious physicality, you begin to appreciate the brilliance in her understatement. As the money-lending Don Alarico, Maurice Ralston is almost invisible; yet later, in a variety of comic roles, he’s terrific.
If the purpose of this competition is to identify the next generation of major dramatists, it’s well on track. Smartly directed by Susan V. Booth, “Day of the Kings” is a glorious testament to language and the triumph of the human spirit.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays; 2:30 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Sundays. Through Feb. 27. $30 Fridays-Saturdays; other days $25. Alliance Theatre, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-733-5000, www.alliancetheatre.org.
The verdict: A magical balance of passion and politics.
Permalink | | Categories: Theater
