Theater Preview
Nilo Cruz explores art, love and Lorca

By Misha Berson
Seattle Times theater critic

	CHRIS BENNION Onahoua Rodriguez, left, is Marina, Paul Nicholas is Karim and Tom Ramirez is Emiliano in Seattle Repertory Theatre's West Coast premiere of "Beauty of the Father" by Nilo Cruz.
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Cruz won two major honors (a Pulitzer Prize and the ATCA/Steinberg Award) for his lyrical 2003 drama about Cuban workers in a Florida cigar factory, "Anna in the Tropics." And he received a flurry of national attention when "Anna" reached Broadway last fall.

But the low-key writer found it draining to be in the limelight. And "Anna," which got mixed reviews in New York, had a money-losing run of just three months.

No matter. At 44, Cruz has been working in theater for more than two decades. And this congenial, soft-voiced, somewhat dreamy writer seems to take the professional bitter and sweet in stride.

Theater preview "Beauty of the Father," previews tomorrow through Tuesday, opens Wednesday and runs through May 15, at Seattle Repertory Theatre, Seattle Center; $24-$29, $20 rush, $10 under age 25 (206-443-2222 or www.seattlerep.org).

"I didn't want to get too caught up in the fame thing," Cruz said, sipping coffee in a Queen Anne cafe near the Seattle Repertory Theatre, where his latest play, "Beauty of the Father," begins previews tomorrow night. "I just wanted to keep on writing."

Writer's block hasn't been a problem so far. The inspiration for "Beauty of the Father" came to Cruz a few years ago during a trip to Spain, while he researched another play.

"I wanted to write about the possibilities and impossibility of love, in the context of a nontraditional love story," he explained.

What emerged was a tale about a successful painter, Emiliano (played at the Rep by Tom Ramirez) living in Spain, who is visited by his long-estranged daughter Marina (Onahoua Rodriguez).

Father and daughter become entangled in a skein of intense relationships, with a handsome Moroccan immigrant, Karim (Paul Nicholas), and Paquita (Karmin Murcelo), a free-spirited Spanish woman in love with Emiliano.

	Nilo Cruz

"It's very Chekhovian, this play, the feelings get very complicated," Cruz said.

"Maybe I'm a romantic at heart, and I idealize love ... I do believe love is possible, but difficult. I'm also very interested in the idea of nontraditional love. I like what Lorca said, about love stories not always having to be traditional, or variations on 'Romeo and Juliet.' Why can't a horse be in love with a flower? Or an elephant be in love with an orchid?"

The Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, author of such dramas as "Blood Wedding" and volumes of resonant poems, looms large in Cruz's personal mythology — and turns up in some of his scripts.

Lorca's still-mysterious death at age 38 in 1936, at the hands of right-wing militia during the Spanish Civil War, was abstractly explored in Cruz's 2003 drama "Lorca in a Green Dress." (It premiered last year, at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.)

Lorca also appears in "Beauty of the Father" (played by Jonathan Nichols), but as a minor figure.

Said Cruz, "He's a wandering ghost trying to understand his death, in 'Lorca in a Green Dress.' This time he's a surreal element, a spirit who comes to visit."

"I've learned so much from Lorca, and this is my way of paying homage to him." The playwright's dialogue can be as pungently imagistic as the poet's verses. "Some things Lorca was preoccupied with in his writing, also preoccupy me — like impossible love."

Offstage, Cruz also has a daughter (now a teenager) from a marriage that ended in divorce. And he has taken up oil painting. But he emphasized, "This play is not my story. There's a little bit of me in it, but I'm not interested in writing autobiographical plays."

"Beauty of the Father" was workshopped at Seattle Rep but had its first production last January at Florida's New Theatre. Since then, Cruz has "substantially" revised it.

He's working on the latest version with Rep artistic director Sharon Ott, who is staging "Beauty." Cruz praises her as "a smart, sensitive and passionate" collaborator, and is happy some of the cast members are veterans of his other plays.

"Beauty of the Father" is slated for its Off-Broadway premiere next season, at Manhattan Theatre Club. Meanwhile, Cruz will be teasing out a new play taking shape in his mind. And "Anna in the Tropics" will be widely performed, and translated into five foreign languages (including Greek and Hebrew).

These days, when he isn't at his desk or in a rehearsal room, you might find Cruz expressing himself on canvas. "It's strange," he muses, "but painting is a way to discover more about my writing process. A painting evolves. You start with one image, and it flows into another and another and another. Just like a play."

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com

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