Both a lively Spanish dance and its music, the bolero, came to Puerto Rico influenced by African rhythms and took on a Latin-American beat and romanticism to become distinctive. Boleros for the Disenchanted dramatizes, like that music, a soulful as well as sensual experience of love interchanged. Whereas dancers in Spain stay apart, they dance bolero together in Puerto Rico, just as lovers begin and end up in Jose Rivera's play.
It's a pity that for all the Act One references to Puerto Rico, beyond certain slight historical and political ones, the locale makes no distinctive contribution to the action. Flowery scenery under blue sky brightly sunlit at the start (1953) is, to be sure, colorful and attractive. So are the clothes worn by the principals. But they're not all that different from same in countries throughout the Caribbean.
Despite Don Fermin's condemnation (via a close-to-violent Damian Buzzerio) of exploitation from the North and a brief favorable reference to independence, he is as tied to the land as he is to Dona Milla (compelling, sensuous Marina Re). She forgives his infidelities and occasional blows out of love and resignation to macho ways. They share grief over their son who left for the States, never to return, and hope to see daughter Flora (spirited Rainbow Dickerson) married to stable, relatively prosperous Manuelo.
In their second year of "proper" engagement, Flora learns of Manuelo's notorious philandering. Despite David Perez-Ribada's passionate (and comic) "reasoning" as Manuelo -- that he only meets the needs of his manhood while protecting her virtue, Flora turns him down.
In a dramatic foreshadowing, the impressive Perez-Ribada then doubles as a priest trying to calm her. Flora goes to visit her "modern" cousin Petra (vivacious Stacie Lents). Soon Eusebio, a National Guardsman, keeps "missing" a bus to have a beer and play a juke box bolero in the place he knows he'll meet Flora. He wins her trust and love. Since he seems (as confidently portrayed by Carlos Alberto Valencia) to be a man who's going somewhere, Flora's parents approve. Yet they're quick to curse the newlyweds when Eusebio announces he'll take her North, to opportunity.
In a dismal, shabby studio near one of their nine children's army base in Alabama, 1992, a legless Eusebio is near despair, tended by weary Flora. (Being played by Buzzerio and Re signals parallels between the couple and Flora's parents.) Attracting prejudice, finding only menial work, following unprofitable old cultural patterns, moving with their military progeny have taken their toll. When, as a parish volunteer, Flora gives marriage counseling, she points out how romance can interfere with common sense. To enthusiastic young Monica (Lents) and her affable soldier-fiance Oskar (Valencia), Flora urges patience: "Married life is no piece of cake."
After an Angel of God appears to Eusebio in a dream to announce his imminent death, he insists all must get busy preparing. His priest (Perez-Ribada again but calmer) reluctantly decides to humor him and conduct last rites, while his nurse Eve (Dickerson) sympathizes with both Eusebio and Flora. During what Eusebio considers his final confession, made openly, all hell breaks loose. But heaven will be revealed too in potent conclusions to be made about married life, love, and their relation to life itself.
Director Richard Hopkins tempers the play's descent into melodrama by making the most of what's humorous and, when possible, blending realistic and romantic elements. Nayna Ramey's two settings under Mike Foster's lighting provide immediate contrasts between times and places.
If anyone can be singled out in a strong cast, it would be Marina Re, so "natural" discharging heightened emotion. Both she and Rainbow Dickerson as Flora might do a bit less screaming to show outrage, though; one fears their voices won't hold out.
The play could use a middle conveying a sense of Flora and Eusebio's big family, social problems, and economic troubles. References to Puerto Rican conditions end up merely on the surface, which religion only lightly penetrates.Eusebio's explanation of his medical condition doesn't convince. It seems, like his angelic dream, to be a requisite for the play's entry into the currently fashionable "magic realism" species of drama. Rivera's love story, purely and simply, might be better pure and simple than it is promising more.
