The colors in the mask of Arturo blend smoothly into the those of the New Mexican landscape behind him, into its hues of pink and clay, its unearthly lavenders and steep blues. This silent ghost, a dead man, sits sentinel against the horizon, watchful. To the trio of women gathered here at the edge of the desert, this presence is indeed inextricable from their setting. But the three generations of women have more than just ghosts to contend with in the world premiere production of Jeff Symes’s lyrical Abuelos, directed by Todd Hunter for the Players’ Ring.
Arturo’s widow, the aging Anglo painter and maverick spirit Diana (Anne Rehner, with candor and comic majesty), is descended upon by her estranged daughter, Emelia (Whitney Smith), and teenage granddaughter Rachel (the fine Tana Sirois). Just divorced, Emelia has temporarily returned to her childhood home with bitterness and an angry daughter, and Diana’s old desert-edge homestead is immediately vivid with confrontations, thirsty for truce.
The “abuelos” of the title are the grandparents, Diana and Arturo, but are also archetypes from old Hispanic folk traditions. They symbolize the bonds and lessons of the family, and Abuelos explores these bonds through the rich imagery and tenors of Southwest culture, itself a hybrid of Anglo, Hispanic, and Native ways. Haunted family friend Manuel (Richard Harris, fresh out of a Goya painting) carves and kneels before wooden santos, and has Rachel read Arturo’s Spanish poetry aloud. Diana’s statuesque model and benevolent Native trickster Otono (Greg Gaskell, pleasingly wise in his silliness) has Rachel pat her head and rub her belly, but then presses her hand toward the fire in the earth. And at intervals, masked spirits (Brie Knight and Karen Donohoe) dance to Spanish guitar with balletic formality and the spirit of a folk ceremony, or a Greek chorus.
On a stage laid out with prominent bouquets of sunflowers, chilies, daisies, and paint brushes against the vastness of the desert beyond (a gorgeous design by Steve Lorei), the complicated creatures of Abuelos often move about alone, but are slowly drawn together. Lovely and intense lighting (designed by playwright Symes) bathes them now in gold or rose-colored desert sun, now in cool moon blues, and dramatically evokes how the extremes of the stark setting play upon each character. Hunter’s well-paced and poignant direction also makes affecting use of the theater’s unlit aisles and doorways, accustoming us to intimate glimpses of characters as if unseen and in shadows before their entrances.
Often sitting at the easel in full view herself, Rehner’s mighty Diana is fiercely and sardonically her own, gloriously void of grandmotherliness. She spends much of her time on stage staring at the canvas, trying to paint, and those wide eyes are remarkable — by turns vacant, terrified, wry, and pleading. Diana is also flirting with senility — she sometimes confuses daughter and granddaughter, and chats with the moon — and Rehner navigates these transitions remarkably, steering well clear of pathos by the wit and self-awareness her Diana manages to maintain.
