Theater Review: 'Sotto Voce'

Nilo Cruz’ “Sotto Voce” is the Asolo Rep’s latest production. It’s a brilliant, mercurial work that defies category. It’s a realistic play that resembles a waking dream. It’s a memory play afflicted with amnesia. It’s an unforgettable work about a tragedy many would rather forget.

The play explores the voyage of the S.S. St. Louis in 1939. Today, we remember it as “The Voyage of the Damned.” For good reason. That ship carried 937 mostly Jewish refugees fleeing Germany. Freedom was their destination, but Cuba, the United States and Canada sent the refugees back. Most died in concentration camps.

This unquiet memory disturbs the lives of three characters in contemporary New York City. Bemadette Kahn (Kathryn Hunter) is an 80something shut-in. She’s a novelist who fled Nazi Germany, and still mourns the death of her Jewish lover, Ariel Strauss — one of the ship’s doomed passengers. Ariel is also the late uncle of Saquiel Rafaeli (Marcel Mascaró), a 20something Cuban student of Jewish heritage who’s obsessively researching the S. S. St. Louis. Colombian refugee Lucila Pulpo (Hannia Guillen) is Bemadette’s maid, caretaker and contact with the outside world.

The story begins when Saquiel stumbles on a trove of Bemadette’s love letters to his uncle. He tracks down the agoraphobic writer and begins a relentless stalking campaign to get her side of the story. He calls; he emails; she’s silent. The conversations are all one-sided. But he persists, and she gradually responds. Lucila runs interference, but Saquiel turns on the charm and she begins opening doors.  The young student and aging writer start having long phone conversations — and enjoy imaginary walks through NYC. They’ve never met in person, only by voice, but it starts to feel like a romance. They get close to each other. Bemadette hears echoes of Ariel in his nephew’s voice. Saquiel hears fragments of her memories and gets closer to the aging author’s closely guarded memoirs.

Melissa Kievman’s direction brings these characters into focus and creates substance out of the dreamy source material and the sheer poetry of Cruz’ dialogue. It’s a multimedia production, but it never feels like a gimmick. The theatrical experience has a profound unity. Remove one element, and it just wouldn’t work. 

The action unfolds in Adrian W. Jones’ vast, open set depicting the fortress of the author’s flat. Metal bookshelves rise up to the ceiling like a cage. Behind these open stacks, a projection screen reveals liquid fragments of memory and association. (Kudos to Robert Figueira’s artistry.) When Saquiel and Bemadette speak by email, he perches on a shelf and chats with the author.

Hunter’s character has a commanding presence, even when confined to a a wheelchair. Mascaró’s student is an enigma, either a monomaniacal bully or a sincere seeker of the truth. Guillen’s Lucila is far more than a maid, though we only see glimpses of her depths in this fast-moving production.

Mascaró and Guillen also play Saquiel’s long lost uncle and aunt. Occasionally, they walk in from the past like ghosts. We sometimes hear fragments of their stories in Bemadette’s manuscripts and reminiscences. But their lost time is never fully recaptured — at least in this play. But Bemadette sets her mind to getting the story told whatever the cost. It’s the last scene — and the perfect ending.

Great art knows what to leave out. Cruz is a clearly great artist, though some of his cuts may go too deep.

My main objection is the elephant who’s not in the room: Saquiel’s motive. Is he using and manipulating Lucila and Bemadette to get the lost stories he wants? “Don’t tell me you’re entirely selfless. What’s in it for you?” That seems like an obvious question. Nobody asks it. Saquiel’s good-heart is a given. Let’s leave it at that.

Ultimately, this isn’t the lost story of the S.S. St. Louis. It’s the story about the search for that story — of what it takes to erase the lacunae in memory, and the cost of that struggle on living human beings.

“Sotto Voce” is a hypnotic experience, concisely written and brilliantly directed, staged and acted. The “Voyage of the Damned” is history now. Cruz will be damned if he lets us forget it.