Sonia Flew is an important new play by Melinda Lopez that explores how the past invades the present, but also how the present redefines the past. NYU Educational Theatre is presenting the play at The Players Theatre on MacDougal Street on February 19th runs for two weeks. Each act focuses on an historical event that created a defining moment for individuals and society. The first act takes place during the Hanuka/Christmas holidays that followed the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. The second act is grounded during the Cuban Revolution where Fidel Castro had seized power and was asserting his authority. Many were fleeing Cuba, including those that sent their children alone to America for a new life.
Nan Smithner's direction is extraordinary, achieving an ensemble virtuoso quality that is quite rare for such a complex narrative. The narrative and pace is carefully orchestrated so that the rise and fall of action focuses on the alignment of events and emotions with a well proportioned sense of the whole. The actors are students in NYU Steinhardt's Program in Education, a program that prides itself in preparing teachers who are well-versed and practiced in their craft. These students asserted their command over their characters, and the range of expression emerging from their engagement with the text and interactions was provocative and stimulating.
Sonia, played by Rocio Lopez is a key figure in the play. We see her as the matriarch of her family in Wisconsin, a Cuban refugee who has created and rich and full life in a new country. She is deeply conflicted about the events of her past. Her moments of reflection in the first act provide glimpses into the emotional ravages that took place as she was uprooted from a culture and thrust into another. Now shadow of 9/11 looms large and reawakens the terror she had felt as a new order swept into power in Cuba, and she was forced by her parents to give up her culture and the only life she had known. In the second act, we see her as a young girl coming of age and caught in the machinations of the Cuban revolution in 1961.
Tyler Grimes, as Sonia's son, is especially powerful in his role. He has the leading man look reminiscent of Josh Hartnett, a perfect image for a young G.I. on his way to Afghanistan. His decision to leave college and enlist in the army is the catalyst for Sonia's emotional dilemma. When she was forced to flee Cuba and fly to the United States, she told her parents she would never forgive them for uprooting her from her family and culture. As her son Zak leaves the house to enlist, she tells him she will never forgive him for destroying her life and her hopes and dreams for his future.
When Sonia learns of her son's decision to leave college, enlist in the military and fight against terror in Afghanistan in the weeks following 9/11, memories of her own childhood overwhelm her. She struggles to reconcile being forced as a young girl to leave Cuba at the dawn of Fidel Castro's rule with her own responsibilities as a mother facing uncertainty.
Sonia must find a way to come to terms with her past, her lost parents, her own children and her adopted country, or risk losing everything that she loves. Set between post-revolutionary Cuba and post-9/11 America, SONIA FLEW telescopes the large cultural and political forces of a historic moment to examine their impact on the intimate lives of ordinary men and women. What do we owe our parents? Can we forgive the past?
This poetic and urgent play bridges time and culture in a drama about the cost of forgiveness.
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