Theater Online - New York Theater Reviews

As the operatic tones haunt the darkness, light begins to creep through the window, piercing the night shadows with an ominous pattern.  A woman in a white nightgown emerges, her body etched in stark, solitary illumination.  She passionately recites a monologue from Shakespeare’s Othello with eerie premonition.  With the next beat, the tragic soprano’s voice resurges and lights transition the stage fantastically into a meager city apartment with torn walls, a simple cot, and a few pieces of furniture.  Through this prologue, in a matter of a few carefully articulated moments, the mood and style of the world of the play materializes.

Jose Luis Ramos Escobar, one of Puerto Rico’s renowned playwrights, explores the desperation and anxiety that plague humanity.  The Smell of Popcorn, Escobar’s surreal psychological drama of cause and effect, investigates the moral rationale of criminal behavior.  Effectively exposing the dreams and fears of the criminal mind and the inevitable human condition, The Smell of Popcorn cleverly juxtaposes the villain’s needs with the victim’s behavioral manipulations. 

Fabiola, a young street-wise theater student, in the midst of rehearsals as Desdemona for Othello, comes home to her city apartment, where she encounters her attacker, Georgie.  Through selected Shakespearean texts, she clearly indicates her personal connections with the strong-willed Emilia, over the feeble, love-stricken Desdemona.  Her masked assailant, Georgie, stalks in the background, as Fabiola rests and the opera music underscores his silent footsteps.  As she awakens to the robbery, at first frightened and confused, she finally arms herself with courage and confronts her attacker.  With wit, charm, interrogation, and invention, Fabiola attempts to avoid harm and to rid herself of this criminal in her apartment.  The resolution is a complicated blend of reality and fantasy and a revelation of fears and truths.

Escobar’s The Smell of Popcorn has intrigued audiences in 8 countries and 21 cities worldwide. This production by Teatro IATI and World Players, directed byJorge B. Merced, is theNY premiere and features intensely dramatic set, lighting, and sound designs.  The performances by Luciana Faulhaber, and Javier E. Gomez* (Member AEA), challenge the strength of the script.  The play is cleverly crafted through sequential exchanges of real discussions and surreal role-playing.  Escobar’s insightful dialogue between the two characters expertly touches upon existential themes, real human problems, and the choices we make as individuals.  The torn wallpaper, the inviting windows, the shadowy patterns lighting the walls provocatively add to the urban ambience and to the emotional sensations tearing through the characters souls.

Luciana Faulhaber, a Brazilian native, portrays a dominating female heroine with both a powerful and an abused sentimentality.  Faulhaber’s dramatic control of her body and the space reflect her confidence as the sovereign tenant.  She proficiently shifts objectives and status from the victim to the interrogator with feline-like prowess.  Javier E. Gomez, as the robber, Georgie, strikes a dramatic entrance:  a cloaked stranger, his movements silhouetted in the pervasive night-light.  His monotone criminal voice becomes a characteristic persona, which he drops once he establishes a bond with his female victim.  This acting choice would be acceptable, had the criminal voice been more menacing, but his actions feel understated and sympathetic, rather than aggressive, for the most part, in his physical relations with Luciana Faulhaber’s Fabiola.  The memorable performance moments are in Gomez’s initial entrance through the window at night and in the fantasy role-playing that he and Faulhaber re-enact. 

The Smell of Popcorn introduces intense human conflicts with comedy and terror through a juxtaposition of reality and dreamscape.  What initially feels obviously grounded is upended through a woman’s ability to manipulate the situation.  Although the status shifts between characters occasionally feels forced, the performances by Faulhaber and Gomez are magnetically engaging.  The blend of styles, a bit of psychological drama, a dash of surreal expressionism, and a hint of melodrama conjures a fiendish plot of basic instincts, well-scripted and purposefully directed.