CT director brings first bilingual play to Hartford Stage
“Think ‘White Lotus’ if it took place in Mexico,” director Melissa Crespo said as she described Hartford Stage’s first bilingual production, “Espejos: Clean.” The play will run through Feb. 4.
“It all takes place at a destination wedding. One of the characters is from Vancouver, Canada, and she’s there for her sister’s wedding,” she said. “The other character happens to work at the hotel.”
The worlds of the two lead characters will collide the night of the aforementioned wedding. Actresses Emma Ramos and Kate Abruzzesse will lead the two-woman show, both of whom have amassed myriad television appearances, from popular series like “New Amsterdam” to “NCIS:New Orleans.”
Ramos, however, might just be more comedian than actress. “She’s hilarious,” Crespo said. “The show has a little bit of everything. There are a lot of dark themes but ... sometimes the situations they are in are really hilarious. Because they’re larger than life. Those are the stories that I love to tell because you’re laughing through the pain.”
Adriana, played by Ramos, has left her home in Chetumal, Mexico, and is working as the manager of the housekeeping staff at a resort. Sarah, played by Abruzzesse, is the sister of the bride and the selfacknowledged family screw-up. Crespo said a chance encounter during a torrential downpour leads each woman to confront her own personal storm and to consider the possibility that, though isolated, she may not be as alone as she believes. The show’s title “Espejos” translates to “mirrors.”
Playwright Christine Quintana fashioned the show with a number of intertwining monologues delivered in English and Spanish with supertitles — translated captions projected above the stage.
“The exciting thing about the supertitles is the set is a whole surface of supertitles,” she said. “There are supertitles on top of the set, but they also appear in various places as part of the projection design. It’s really, really cool. The supertitles translation are part of the visual storytelling.”
The downtown Hartford theater has earned quite the reputation for ambitious stage design over the years, and since its founding in 1963.
“This is actually a co-production with Syracuse Stage, where I am the associate artistic director. So I am directing it here in Hartford, and on Feb. 5 it’s going to go in a truck and we’re going to run it in Syracuse. It will be the first bilingual play there, just like it is the first one here in Hartford,” Crespo said.
“You see this type of storytelling in opera all the time but rarely in a play. But it has been happening. It’s not exactly brand new,” Crespo said. “It just is here. Emma is native to Mexico and our set designer is also native to Mexico. I’m actually from Connecticut, born and raised, but I’m Dominican, Chilean and Puerto Rican. You don’t have to speak the language in order to understand it, and I hope audiences know that. If you’re a lover of theater and stories that matter and highly theatrical staging and design, you’re going to have a great time regardless of what language you speak. There just so happens to be supertitles on the stage.”