What business does an Aussie playwright have with the Cuban revolution? You might well ask. I’ve no ready answer. Is Diana Plater a commie? One lives in hope. More likely, in reading a little history, she became captivated by the players in that momentous event.
Certainly, she’s written about them at length and from, one surmises, an idiosyncratic perspective; it’s, essentially, an imagining, from Celia Sanchez’ viewpoint. Celia Sanchez? Yes. You know. Castro’s lover. But so much more. Indeed, many believe it was Sanchez that was the real driving-force behind the overthrow of Batista.
It’s yet another official selection of the two-week, blockbusting Sydney Fringe Festival: Havana, Harlem. Directed, very capably, by Deborah Jones. But what does Havana have to do with Harlem? Well, if you’re old enough, cast your mind back. Way back. If not, buy a book. Or hit Wikipedia, I s’pose. Does the Hotel Theresa ring any bells? September 19 and 20, 1960? No? Well, this glorified brothel, situated smack-bang in the middle of the civil rights movement, played host to Fidel, Che and Celia for those two days. Much has been done to romanticise her male cohorts, of course. Now, it seems, Plater has decided it’s Celia’s long overdue turn to be touched-up with a similarly vainglorious makeover.
Sanchez wasn’t your born streetfighting woman, She could’ve very easily opted for a comparatively easy, peaceful, painless life, as daughter of a white plantation doctor. Instead, she got it in her pretty little head (actually, breathtakingly beautiful, noble-looking one, if Zoe Velez’, who plays her, bears any similarity) to provoke a guerilla war in the Sierra Maestra. As you do. She had her own combat squad. She was Castro’s messenger, intermediary, food-taster, gunrunner, confidante, advisor, secretary, maid, lover and right-hand woman. Would Castro have been Castro without her? Would his ascension have been possible? Would even he have believed it possible? It seems rather doubtful, on this evidence.
While Castro isn’t completely stripped of his fiercely independent mind or intelligence, Sanchez is clearly identified as a mediating political force and filter for his outlandish ideas. She appears to have played devil’s advocate, harshest critic and ever-dependable ‘stand by your man’ loyalist all at once. It’s not exactly an acceptably feminist outlook but, if ever there was someone for whom the phrase beginning ‘behind every great man’ was coined, it could easily have been Sanchez. But if Castro is ridiculed in an affectionately mocking way, Che comes off rather the worse for wear; divested of much of his handsome exterior and legendary charisma and portrayed as something of a pitiable innocent, almost pathetically naive and too idealistic and ideological for his own good, or anyone else’s. Although, one suspects, history may prove his divergence from the more expedient, pragmatic Castro line rather wiser.
Shane Imbert is Fidel. It has to be one of the more demanding roles, with massively large combat boots, for an actor to pull off. He does so fairly commandingly. And his accent’s not half-bad. (It’s not half-good, either.) He endows the ‘very benevolent’ dictator with the acuteness, humour, erudition, strength and character for which he has been and is so widely-known and highly-regarded, even amongst his mortal enemies. Velez’ Sanchez is a perfect foil. There is a sense of sympatico which would, presumably, had to have been present in their complex, real-life relationship. Plater has succeeded in deeply penetrating its practically impenetrable nature. Her speculations seem believably spot-on.
Leon Richardson’s Che is more problematic. He has his shining moments and the character he creates is, essentially, cohesive, if rather paler and shallower than many of us would prefer, in our determination to cling to the Che we recognise from so many t-shirts. It’s his accent that grates and takes us out of the action. It lands, very uncomfortably, somewhere between Glasgow, Moscow, Mexico City (kinda Pepe le Pew) and Boston (the last a neatly convergent trick, since JFK is about to take the US by storm).
Felino Dolloso puts in a dynamic and arresting turn as Jose Molina, Celia’s former lover and torture victim who’s long since given up on the revolution. By happy, or unhappy, coincidence, Jose has turned-up as a waiter at the Theresa, where he has the temerity to taunt Fidel, calling him El Caballo and Senor Ed, as well as ridiculing his inability to dance. At times, though, his diction fails him, and us.
Brian Mott is a highlight. Or highlights, as he fulfils several divergent roles. Firstly, he’s James O’Connell, a former FBI agent who’s been recruited by its nemesis; yes, the CIA. He hides behind a false mirror, adjacent to Castro’s room, observing everything. He’s there with Rebecca Martin, who makes for hits just the right, rough note, as the coarse mafia broad, Mrs Rosselli, recruited by the CIA to coordinate their desperate efforts to assassinate Castro. They make quite a pair, Martin’s wily streetwise savvy a tasty counterpoint to Mott’s wide-eyed idiocy.
Mott is also a treat as Allen Ginsberg, the engaged, anti-militarist, flamboyantly gay poet who repeatedly bursts in on Castro and co to regale them with his random, improvised, dope-fuelled philosophical and sociopolitical ramblings, much to their chagrin. It’s wonderfully comical, thanks to Mott’s versatility: you’d have to be forgiven for not knowing it’s the same actor. He puts another feather firmly in his cap, as a down-to-earth Nikita Khruschev, who comes a-knockin’ at the hotel door.
And was that Christian Isola, up the back, providing a novel link between scenes, with his congas?
Plater, Jones, cast and crew have played hard and done good, treading a deft line between the satirical, the substantive, the political, the romantic and the comedic (the partial cataloguing of real-world attempts at Castro’s assassination hardly need embellishment, to elicit belly-laughs). It’s pretty mainstream for fringe, but that’s another story, for another day.
Curtain Call rating: A-
The details: Havana, Harlem plays The Greek Theatre as part of the Sydney Fringe Festival until September 19. Tickets via the Fringe website.
