THE SHAPE SHE MAKES— floored me. I have always known that we are driven by our unconscious desires, hangups, hurts; that we are deeply formed early on by our first experiences within the family dynamic. Yes, I spent years in therapy, but never have I seen this “through-line” as clearly drawn– dramatically, musically, and choreographically– as it is here in the extraordinary hybrid of a world premiere that is taking shape nightly at OBERON, the A.R.T.’s fluid second stage in Harvard Square. Here’s a little rehearsal video:

THE SHAPE SHE MAKES is about a girl named Quincy (13 year old Needham teen Sydney K. Penney) an 11 year-old math wiz whose parents split up when she was an infant, and whose wounded mother has been less than attentive. Quincy is searching for answers : who is her father?  What happened between her parents? Who is she?  The action floats back and forth in time from Quincy’s adulthood and childhood and we see the connections as ten actor/dancers flesh out the layered dramas while we witness and experience the fall out.

Written and directed by Jonathan Bernstein, THE SHAPE SHE MAKES is co-created, choreographed, danced and acted by Susan Misner (of the FX series “The Americans”) who plays Quincy’s  mother “Louise” with visceral passion and pain. Michael Balderrama as Louise’s beloved, and Quincy’s absent father, looks a bit like Baryshnikov and moves with great precision and force, but remains a remarkably poignant figure, as do all the members of this ruptured nuclear family. The piece unfolds in the middle of OBERON’s black box with audience members seated on three sides. When someone enters late, it’s not clear if they’re one of us or an actor– and that is precisely the plan. This is very emotionally involving theater and we cannot help but feel our own selves melting into the action onstage, as we sit transfixed by the psychological drama shaping up before us.

The potency of the work derives from the seamless integration of movement, music, dialogue, action–each reiterating the other, the dancers making concrete the baggage we all drag around, its psychological reverberations, and the potent feelings that are stirred up as we enact our lives. Quincy finds herself lost as an overweight adult– Ms. Calvin to her substitute math class. At one point a dancer clings to the adult Quincy’s leg as she labors along– her wounded mother? her own fears? insecurities? Why does she eat so much? What does and doesn’t sustain her?  Can her brilliant mathematical mind solve the conundrum of her identity with some magical equation? Actress Finnerty Steeves brings a rare blend of dignity, pathos, and intelligence to the role and we are deeply moved by her struggle to evolve.

The choreography is a wonder, seamlessly interwoven with the spoken words, the dancers sometimes giving form to the feelings aroused, at other times becoming part of the furniture– literally. The whole space and everything/everyone in it feels alive. The music by Julia Kent and Son Lux is insinuatingly beautiful and got under my skin. The sinewy Susan Misner  dances her passionate longing for Quincy’s father, and in a stunning moment morphs into her hollow, aching and sickly older self after he abandons her; it’s the fulcrum of the piece.

I left quietly moved and thinking and vulnerable from the experience– so tenderly was it rendered. Do not miss THE SHAPE SHE MAKES at OBERON through April 27th.

4553_Becoming-Cuba809486BECOMING CUBA by Melinda Lopez now having its New England Premiere over at the Huntington Theatre is a disappointment. The play is rooted in Lopez’s own family history involving Spanish colonialists seizing her family’s farm in Cuba and her great-grandmother running off to join the rebels. BECOMING CUBA is set 1897 Havana and most of the action takes place in a pharmacy. It’s a beautiful set, but an odd setting, and becomes the hub of a tragic family story involving siblings on opposite sides of a bloody revolution that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. It’s a history with which I was not very familiar, but I was grateful to learn.

Unfortunately, the play is over-written, over long, and miscast. There are ghostly conquistadors who interrupt the action with talk of  “Galician virgins,” and something or other being “as dry as a witch’s vagina,” a phrase I wish I had never in my life heard. Christina Pumariega is beautiful, smart, and dignified as older sister Adela, and Rebecca Soler is fine as her fiery younger sister Martina. But the usually convincing Marianna Bassham is miscast as an ungainly Spanish aristocrat with a touch of syphilis. Equally out of his element is Christopher Tarjan as Davis an American journalist who falls for Adela. I wanted dashing– Ernest Hemingway… Robert Redford… Warren Beatty. I wanted chemistry and passion set against the heat of revolution. Tarjan seemed more like a bookworm on a research project rather than a reporter on the front lines of a rebellion and a romance. BECOMING CUBA plays the Huntington Theatre Company’s second stage at the BCA’s Calderwood Pavilion through May 3rd.