(Daniel M. Gold’s article appeared in The New York Times, 4/13.)
Complicated Emotions, Spurred by a Visit to Cuba
It’s the spring of 2004, and Ruth is angry and tired. Ruth, a Columbia University professor teaching fiction writing to graduate students she dismisses as the cowardly “children of Republicans,” rages against them and President Bush even as she rages against herself, a onetime radical, for hiding in her job. Now in her 70s, she seethes with longing: for a student with talent; for her ex-lover; and for a late-in-life show of meaning.
“Havana Journal, 2004,” the new one-act play by Eduardo Machado now at the Theater for the New City, brings Ruth to Cuba, a trip that thrills her in its illegality. In Havana she meets with Reynaldo, the male conductor of a women’s classical orchestra, and delivers an envelope to him stuffed with cash from a mutual friend. She is smitten by his smooth yet courtly manners, and his fervor for his art. And of course they can agree on how terrible the United States is.
http://theater.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/theater/reviews/13havana.html?scp=2&sq=Crystal%20Field&st=cse
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