Daughter of a Cuban Revolutionary |
Published on Friday, 12 August 2011 | |||||
Daughter of a Cuban Revolutionary, performed with impressive vigour by Marissa Chibas, is the story of an exiled Cuban family told as the memories of a drowning woman. The spare and effective stage design, with a handful of props and inventive use of technology, places emphasis on the emotional story – told by a woman whose father, Raoul, is a forgotton revolutionary. Chibas, a solitary performer, takes on the voice and physicality of several characters who populate her story, It encompasses not only politics, but family life, love and the complex lives of immigrant communities, in particular the estrangement of first-generation children from their parents’ culture. The performer successfully and seamlessly becomes herself as a child at a party of Cuban emigrees in New York, then transforms into the elegant woman who taught her to dance, her aging father, her teenage mother, a blinded revolutionary and an executioner. Memory is a recurring and deftly-handled theme, from the drowning woman’s memories to the recollections of revolutionary fighters. It’s not simply what is remembered that’s important, but also how memories filter through in times of helplessness. Daughter of a Cuban Revolutionary is an engaging, emotional and well-paced story, with a logical balance of personal and political subject matter. |
<< The Magnets | Monteverdi: Flame and Fro... >> |
---|
FROM OUR ARCHIVES
These are archived reviews of shows from the Edinburgh Fringe 2011. We keep our archives online as a courtesy to those we've featured, and for readers who'd like to research previous years' reviews.