Theatre in Review: The Gardens of Anuncia (Lincoln Center Theater Company)

	Tally Sessions, Priscilla Lopez. Photo: Julieta Cervantes

Our subject today is the care and feeding of future stars. Graciela Daniele was raised by her mother, aunt, and grandmother in Buenos Aires in the 1940s and '50s; in this new musical memoir, she pays tribute to their indelible impact -- and, onstage, what women they are. Fortunately, Daniele has assembled an unforgettable quartet of actresses to tell her tale. If The Gardens of Anuncia is a qualified success, the people in it are often unforgettable.

First up is Priscilla Lopez, who shares musical theatre legend status with Daniele, as the title character's older incarnation. (Like Daniele, Anuncia will leave home, become a ballerina in France, and then move to New York where, after appearing in several Broadway shows, she will become an eminent director-choreographer.) Addressing us from the garden of her country house, worrying about what to do with the ashes of the great-aunt -- the last remaining member of the triumvirate who raised her -- Lopez's Anuncia looks back in amusement, and occasional dismay, at the colorful childhood she is not quite prepared to relinquish.

The older Anuncia is spiky, wry, and loaded with worldly wisdom. "I hate award ceremonies," she says. "Who wants an award for living so long?" With age on her mind, she doesn't so much recall the past as manipulate it for purposes of her own. She advises her younger self, who has just announced that she will never marry, that indeed she will do so three times, and the third will be the charm. She faces down the father she could never forgive, mentally banishing him for good. Rewriting another scene from the past, she says, brandishing a deliciously guilty smile, "You see? I changed my memory." It's a marvelously relaxed performance: Across a career that has included A Chorus Line, A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine, and In the Heights, Lopez has acquired the kind of easy authority that only talent seasoned with experience can produce.

Then there's Anuncia's Granmama, a font of tart, unshakable opinions and a force of nature who should come with a storm warning. When the young Anuncia wonders why her grandmother doesn't live with her husband, the old lady replies, ominously, "Your grandfather values life." Watching Mami, Anuncia's mother, dressing for a night out, Granmama, grumbling, dismisses the tango as "a low-life dance for whores and the low-life men who go to whores." "Like your husband?" coolly asks Mami. "Your father's different. He has mistresses," Granmama replies as if such an arrangement were the very soul of propriety. As portrayed by Mary Testa, Granmama is dyspepsia personified, voicing her disapproval -- of Italian immigrants, the male gender in toto, and, most of all, Juan Peron's government -- in the bluntest possible terms. Catching Anuncia sassing Mami, she comments, "Sharp tongues need sharp scissors;" well, she should talk.

Mami, in the highly capable hands of Eden Espinosa, is a bundle of contradictions, living behind a veil of mystery her daughter can never quite penetrate. She daringly works in a government office job at a time when running afoul of powerful people can cause you to disappear. She drags her disobedient daughter to the nearest church for the sacrament of Confession before blithely admitting to being an atheist. Having been brutally disappointed in marriage, she clings to her capacity for pleasure in nightclubs where "you first start to move/You feel yourself start to soar/Into pink and blue lights/Into music and smoke/Into life beyond life." And yet, making the coldest of calculations, she can insist that Anuncia accept money from her absent father, driving home the point by listing the sacrifices she has made for her. This is surely the best role Espinosa has ever had in New York and she runs with it.

Andréa Burns, a specialist in tough customers, offers a slyer-than-usual characterization as the unmarried, surprisingly independent-minded Tía. "You're not married," says the younger Anuncia. "Does that mean you're a virgin?" "I try to be," Tía responds, demurely. Discussing the origins of Anuncia's name, she turns theologian, noting, in her casual, offhand way, that the Blessed Virgin was given the choice of motherhood, thereby sending a quiet message about the importance of autonomy. And she all but sails through the shimmering eleven o'clock number, "Never a Goodbye," delivered from beyond the grave to the older Anuncia ("You're as much a part of me/As I am a part of you/There is no diving up/Or a cord that can be cut").

Still, for all its charms, The Gardens of Anuncia remains something of a mixed blessing. Daniele and librettist/composer Michael John La Chiusa , whose songs are unfailingly literate and tuneful, are tilling some richly dramatic ground, producing theatrical blossoms that are, admittedly, lovely and elegantly arranged yet perhaps not as striking as one might hope. Underneath the show's carefully manicured surface lurks considerable darkness and dissatisfaction: Anuncia comes of age under a fascist dictatorship, raised by a single mother in a Catholic culture that abjures divorce, and is cut off from her father, a gambler and adulterer; she even catches him, unrepentant, in the act with another woman. Mami is arrested -- whether by accident or on account of political activities is never clear -- an incident that nearly breaks her spirit. And Anuncia, at a young age, must decide to separate herself from her family, moving to another continent to pursue her career.

Yet, somehow, none of these developments is given full expression in a show that prefers to cultivate a fey sense of humor (Granmama: "Don't plant your tomatoes too close together or they'll become resentful. And there's nothing you can do with a resentful tomato"), too-cute touches (such as the Moustache Brothers, a Frick-and-Frack pair that chase after Tía), and fantasy elements, including a pair of talking deer who cavort with the older Anuncia. "In my garden," she says, "'magic realism' is just...reality. Flowers float. Tomatoes sing. Deer talk." Yes, but do they have to make jokes about stag parties and New Jersey?

Anyway, there's something terribly moving about Lopez, whose career stretches back to the notorious 1966 flop Breakfast at Tiffany's, holding forth so masterfully under the direction of Daniele, who made her Broadway debut in 1964's What Makes Sammy Run? Her staging, aided by co-choreographer Alex Sanchez is effortlessly graceful, allowing the past and present to engage in a stately tango. The rest of the cast is thoroughly on point, too, including Kalyn West as the young Anuncia, and Enrique Acevedo and Tally Sessions as the various men (and animals) in Anuncia's life. Mark Wendland's imaginative set design is dominated by an array of vertical vines -- these are the hanging gardens of Anuncia -- which are treated, gorgeously, iridescently by Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer's lighting, here recreated by David Lander. (The production was originally seen at the Old Globe in San Diego). Drew Levy's sound design is thoroughly natural sounding, preserving an ideal balance between the voices and Michael Starobin's orchestrations. Toni-Leslie James' costumes are, by turns, solidly in period, attractively contemporary, and amusingly fantastical.

In a way, the sheer professionalism that defines The Gardens of Anuncia is also its chief problem. As pleasant, even pleasurable, as it is, one yearns at times for something darker and more dramatic to break through; it's a case of emotion recollected in perhaps too much tranquility. Still. Anuncia and her loved ones are a delight to be around, and Lopez and company remain a collective wonder. --David Barbour