Playwright: Caridad Svich, from Julia Alvarez's novel. At: Teatro Vista at Victory Gardens, 2433 N. Lincoln Ave. Tickets: 773-871-3000; www.teatrovista.org; $25-$30. Runs through: May 22
Caridad Svich has written remarkable playsbut I don't think this is one of them.
It does, however, tell a story about remarkable people: the Mirabal sisters, martyred in 1960 in the bloody struggle against Rafael Trujillo, the vicious dictator of the Dominican Republic. Minerva ( Flavia Palozzi ), Patria ( Sari Sanchez ) and Maria Teresa ( Ayssette Munoz ) Mirabal died before Trujillo's downfall, but he was assassinated just six months after having the sisters murdered. A fourth sister, Dede ( Rinska Carrasco and Charin Alvarez ), escaped death and promoted their memory. ( She died in 2014. )
This play is based on a novel inspired by real events ( the Museum Hermanas Mirabal keeps their deeds alive ), so casual observers cannot know what's true and what's fictional. Was their father really within the Trujillo social circle? Did Trujillo attempt to seduce Minerva? Was she denied a license to practice law? What's clear is that the four sisters ( born between 1924 and 1936 ) were from a prosperous family and well-educated, and gradually committed themselves to armed insurrection against Trujillo. Their husbands also were partisans in the Marxist-leaning movement ( and the Cuban revolution was at precisely the same time ). The sisters helped organize underground activities and were known as "Las Mariposas"the butterflies.
The play is surprisingly free of political dialectics, but this becomes a problem as we don't know why Trujillo targets the rural Mirabals. We learn things that happen to them, but not always why. Minerva is politicized first via her Marxist boyfriendwhich may be what earns government scrutinyand she enlists her sisters with relative ease. History admires the Mirabals as early feministsthe United Nations selected their murder date, Nov. 25, as International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Womenand the play focuses more on that than on political revolution. Trujillo was a notorious womanizer, two sisters were tortured in prison and traditional Latino society strictly limits a woman's choices, so Svich shows us the gradual road which moved the sisters from standard dreams of marriage and motherhood to a more pointed world view.
Much of the 90-minute play, therefore, restates the mindset of patriarchal society. Since we barely see or hear the husbands or Papa Mirabal, our entire perspective is from the women and they split our attention four ways. The Mirabal story is powerful and begs for more effective presentation. ( Note: I had three cousins who were Cuban-born sistersexactly the age of the Mirabals, who went through many similar experiences. )
The staging by Ricardo Gutierrez is lively and passionate and surprisingly bright given the subject matter, thanks to costume designer Uriel Gomez's myriad formal gowns and floral-pattern dresses, a warm Caribbean-influenced set ( Andrei Onegin and Seagull Works ) and Liviu Pasare's lovely projections.