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The Cook
By Eduardo Machado
Produced by Goodman Theatre
At the Owen Theatre at the Goodman
170 N. Dearborn St.
Chicago, IL
Tickets: 312-443-3800 or www.GoodmanTheatre.org $15-$38
Tue-Thu at 7:30, Fri-Sat at 8:00, Sun at 7:30 (Sat/Sun matinee at 2:00)
Running time is approx 2 hours with one intermission
Through November 18th
The Cook: A Delicious Performance
Strong performances and an insightful script are the recipe for Goodman Theatre’s production of Eduardo Machado’s The Cook. Combined they deliver a clear and poignant view of one of the most challenging issues faced by Cubans in the aftermath of close to 50 years of Fidel Castro’s rule: who owns the property and, should Cuba ever open up, how will ordinary Cubans, those who left and those who stayed, reconcile? Set in the spacious kitchen of an elegant Havana home, Karen Aldridge stars as Gladys, the cook left in charge when the owners flee Castro’s approaching armies on New Year’s Eve 1958. Edward F. Torres is Gladys’ chauffeur-turned-party-bureaucrat husband, Carlos.
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Three Acts of The Cook describe three different eras in the life of the people of Castro’s Cuba: the New Year’s Day takeover of 1959, a blossoming player on the world stage of 1972 and a post-Soviet era communist nation scrambling for dollars in 1997. At his best, in the third act, Machado demonstrates an uncommonly clear vision of the human turmoil precipitated by Castro’s rise. He is much less successful in the earlier acts, floundering through, among other things, a gay subplot that serves no useful purpose and one which, in my estimation, mortally wounds the character of his heroine Gladys in the process. At the intermission, between Act Two and Act Three, I was fairly disappointed with what I had seen, but Act Three saved the show, thanks to strong writing and the powerful delivery of Aldridge and Torres.
While I would not go so far as to characterize the three Acts as the good, the bad and the ugly, there are some things in this play that troubled me a lot. Chief among them is Glady’s stereo-typed gay cousin Julio (Phillip James Brannon). He likes fashion, dancing and young men and he would rather die – literally – than give up wearing his overly tight 70’s white trousers and his teased-out ‘fro. The character is so bad that I can only imagine it as the product of ignorance or self-loathing. I suppose that no effort was put into creating a nuanced gay character because Julio serves no purpose whatsoever other than to remind the audience that Castro is evil incarnate. The play has pretensions of examining race and other important social issues in Cuban society. Gay life isn’t one of them and this cheap shot distracts from the larger message. Director Henry Godinez even goes so far as to flirt, ever so lightly, with the hint of a lesbian attraction between Gladys and lady-of-the-manor Adria (Maricela Ochoa), which amounts to intentionally misleading the audience.
So how, you may wonder, did I walk away from the theatre saying that The Cook is a pretty good show? Well, the good in this troika of Acts provided a seasoning that overrode the more tasteless ingredients leaving this theatergoer’s palate generally satisfied; that’s how. Gladys and Carlos mellow with age and are sympathetic characters by the final Act. Aldridge and Torres play the age to perfection and their individual and familial revelations are theatre at its most moving. The production standards at the Goodman are their usual top-shelf fare and even the annoying parts of the show are fast-paced and lively. I can’t say that The Cook lives up to the hype that it has been given, but I can genuinely say that Aldridge and Torres are a delicious combination and that The Cook is a pretty good show.
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Randy Hardwick
randyontheglobe@yahoo.com for comments
Date Reviewed: October 31, 2007
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