Escape at Havana’s Adolfo Llaurado Theater

Yanelys Nuñez Leyva

HAVANA TIMES — Havana’s Adolfo Llaurado theater saw an affluent audience on the year’s first Sunday, when the last showing of the play Escape was staged.

The number of patrons was perhaps owed to the fact the Trianon theater was closed until January 9 or that the Raquel Revuelta (another nearby theater) had no showings either.

I don’t know the exact reason. I only know that the play did not deserve such a massive turnout.

Perhaps I am being overly critical and possibly unfair, but one gets tired of being understanding and seeing the same muck swept under the carpet over and over again.

That day, the Aire Frio theater company staged a kind of road movie, where a Thelma and Louise predictably escape a life of emptiness and misfortune.

I was unable to grasp their emptiness and misfortunes fully.

The theft of a valuable painting prompts these two women to enter a new chapter in their lives.

Though the issue could well have afforded the actresses’ monologues rich material, the dialogues were often cheesy, repetitive and even insipid.

As for the actresses, Beatriz Viñas was fine, but her counterpart, Tamara Venero, not so much: she projected her voice far too much.

The set consisted of an automobile (needed for the journey), traffic lights and the occasional minor object.

I don’t mean to suggest the play was simply worthless (believe me, I’ve seen worse). It simply didn’t break with the clichés associated with a person’s spiritual journey and didn’t aim for anything more than the easy applause of the audience.

Their escape was superficial, light, epidermal.

The real escape was nowhere to be seen.