'Bathing in Moonlight': A static, boring bodice-ripper
When we last saw McCarter Theatre, director Emily Mann, and Nilo Cruz together, it was for the lovely, Pulitzer Prize-winning Anna in the Tropics. That play concerned a community of Cuban expatriates living in Florida, as is the case with new production Bathing in Moonlight. Both shows examine a tug-of-war between the old ways and the new, and both whirl with passion and romance.
When we last saw McCarter Theatre, director Emily Mann, and Nilo Cruz together, it was for the lovely, Pulitzer Prize-winning
Anna in the Tropics
. That play concerned a community of Cuban expatriates living in Florida, as is the case with new production
Bathing in Moonlight
. Both shows examine a tug-of-war between the old ways and the new, and both whirl with passion and romance.
But McCarter Theatre's world premiere of Cruz's Bathing in Moonlight turns that romance into a downright bodice-ripper, with a lovely young single mother, Hannia Guillen's Marcela, falling in love with Raul Méndez's Father Monroe, her handsome, virginal parish priest. They adore each other from the start, and dive recklessly, publicly, into an affair.
Father Monroe's religious philosophy, which he preaches in the play's opening scene while moving through the audience, is based on the idea that love is God's gift to us. Marcela cares for her senile mother and daughter, plays piano at the church, and lives in a home whose rent Monroe generously paid. They are just nice people; there's no intimation he might take advantage of his power over Marcela, and Monroe has rationalized nine-tenths of his way to his exit from the church anyway. The stakes really don't seem all that high.
We hear about Monroe's internal struggle during too-long scenes in a dark cathedral interior with his mentor, Bishop Andrew (Michael Rudko), or, alternately, in monologues he has toward the heavens. Essentially, he justifies his reasons for loving Marcela, and only the bishop offers an unconvincing counter-argument - the Catholic Church doesn't allow that sort of thing - which Monroe already knows and rejects.
Under Mann's direction - probably under anyone's direction - these scenes are static and boring. But whenever Marcela's spare living room slides into the foreground (set design by Edward Pierce), the action comes alive. Her mother Martina's (Priscilla Lopez) dreamy hallucinations of her dead husband, and the family's slowly unfurling secrets - including the unexpected return of a prodigal son - call to mind Tennessee Williams. They're often shunted aside for more swooning and tooth-gnashing, but they, and their fine cast, offer glimpses of Cruz at his finest.
@WendyRosenfield
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THEATER REVIEW
Bathing in Moonlight
Through Oct. 9 at McCarter Theatre, 91 University Place, Princeton.
Tickets: $25-80.50. Information: 609-258-2787 or mccarter.org
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