Revival as touching as funny
BY CHRISTINE DOLEN

When last we met Carmen Peláez, she was intoxicating South Florida theater audiences with the potent poignancy of her funny, moving solo show Rum & Coke. That was six years ago, and Area Stage, the Lincoln Road theater where Peláez first introduced us to a half-dozen unforgettable Cuban and Cuban-American women, is no longer there. But happily, Peláez is back, this time in the intimate Encore Room at the Coconut Grove Playhouse. The actress-playwright has been tinkering with her show, adding music from Albita, Emilio Estefan Jr. and Graciela, greatly altering the design concept from the old Havana mansion that was handsomely realistic, set at Area to projected paintings and photographs on a nearly barren Encore Room stage.

Carmen Peláez in Rum & Coke.

CALLING UPON FAMILY

Peláez, a South Florida gal whose great-aunt was the Cuban painter Amelia Peláez, at times achieves added emotional weight with photographs of another elderly aunt, Ninita, and the gorgeous Havana home that she lovingly maintained despite the hardships of living in Fidel Castro's Cuba. But the bare-bones simplicity of the ''design,'' coupled with the way the audience in the reconfigured Encore Room now sits on chairs and stools (the tables have vanished, the better to squeeze in more customers), suggest purposeful cost-cutting that doesn't serve the art.

That said, Peláez' real ''sets'' are created in the imaginative collaboration between the actress and her audiences.

Her words, vocal changes and simple physical alterations are all she really needs. With them, she takes us into the worlds of women who will forever be connected to Cuba, no matter where they live.

There's Camilla, a curvaceous young Cuban-American woman who exudes supermodel confidence despite her far more ample proportions. Juana, who encounters a stranger's cruelty at a dance. Camilla's abuela, both funny and poignant as she does her shift at a hunger strike. Illuminada, a cigar-puffing santera who does manicures (she pronounces it ''man-ee-kyew-ray'') when she's not making predictions or sacrificing chickens. Nikita, a teenager who walks the Malecón as a prostitute to feed her family. And Nena, a former Tropicana singer who now doles out precisely measured lengths of American toilet paper in the club's ladies' room.

DEEPER TOUCHES

What makes Rum & Coke so powerful is Peláez' ability to suggest longing and loss, though more often she makes you laugh. When Nena tells Camilla the story of how her lover left her, bobbing away to Miami on a raft, she says quietly, ``You want to know somebody? Watch how they walk away from you.''

The play will, of course, resonate most deeply with Cuban-Americans, both in terms of culturally specific laughs and the pull of shared history. But Peláez is such a warmly engaging storyteller, so wry and boisterous and moving, that anyone who loves good theater should enjoy this newest round of Rum & Coke.

Fuente: The Miami Herald
Diciembre - 2003