According to director José Zayas, however, the glass cage is meant to modernize the notion of a gilded cage for its protagonist Diana (Soraya Padrao) is living in as a noblewoman in Naples, trapped amid her privilege and many servants with whose affections she toys. It is, Zayas says in director’s notes, “a hothouse atmosphere.”
The play originated almost back to the bubonic plague of Shakespeare’s time; the 1618 work is one of the best known of the 500 some plays written by Félix Lope de Vega Carpio, the prolific writer from Spain’s Golden Age of Baroque literature.
GALA’s world premiere adaptation by Spanish playwright Paco Gámez takes the already modernist philosophies of love in the play and adds a zip. The comedy of manners concerns Padrao’s Diana, who dismisses the flamboyant suitors of her own class in order to concentrate on her handsome secretary (Ariel Texidó). She knows she can’t marry someone beneath her class, but she’s still jealous of his own relationship with her lady-in-waiting (Catherine Nunez). Hence, she’s like the fabled Perro del Hortelano, or Dog in the Manger of the title — someone who won’t eat cabbage, but won’t let any one else eat it either.
There is a heat between Padrao and Texidó such that you expect the plexiglass to steam up at times, but there are also so many couplings and uncouplings — declarations of love immediately followed by dismissals — that you almost think none of these characters actually know their own heart.
Like most works at GALA, it uses a top notch cast of actors who are often well known from stage and screen from their home countries of Spain, Mexico, Cuba and Venezuela, just to name a few origins of this septet. And some, like the delightful Luz Nicolaś, are familiar from many past performances at GALA.
Padrao in particular is striking, pausing before some of her lines as if to dramatically check her passions before she speaks.
What’s consistently dazzling in the production are the costumes by Jeannette Christensen — one aspect of theater I realized I never realized I missing so much during the shutdown (maybe because we’ve been home in sweats for most of the year).
The various turns of event are like a partner-changing comedy from the Bard, and director Zayas keeps things light despite the dialogue that touches on 17th century class differences but dwells more on philosophies of love, jealousy and desire you might expect in a morality tale by French film director Eric Rohmer.
Some of the dialogue in the translation by Heather McKay goes by quite fast on the supertitles flanking the stage. And those hoping the entertainment would make one forget for a moment the raging pandemic outside, may be reminded of it simply because the mandatory masks reliably fogging eyeglasses (and obscuring lines at key points of the story).
As great as it is to see artists unleashed to do their thing live once more, there is an overriding criterion for criticism as the third wave rises. It is not, would this be a fun night out? It is, instead: Is this worth risking my health to see? Such decisions, like love, are individual.
“El Perro del Hortelano (The Dog in the Manger),” in Spanish with English subtitles, runs through Nov. 22 at the GALA Hispanic Theatre, 333 14th St NW.