Bravo!" by Victor Rui Dores,
translated into English by Katharine F. Baker

After writing and staging Enquanto a roupa seca [While the Clothes Dry]
in 2010, Álamo Oliveira has resumed his theatrical pursuits, adapting his
1999 novel Já não gosto de chocolates [I No Longer Like Chocolates] for
Angra do Heroísmo’s Alpendre Theater Group, of which he is truly the
father.
I went to see – and I unconditionally liked – this play, which reassures
us that theater is countervailing, enduring, exorcising, denouncing of
illusory truths and renouncing the masks of daily alienation. It’s a play
that tells us of the loves and hatreds of those who, after immigrating to
America, feel lonely, exiled, and stateless. The minimalist scenery
functions effectively The actors move about the stage exchanging intense
dialogue and delivering dramatic monologues. Álamo Oliveira employs, with
real mastery, discontinuous and tangled narratives through ellipses that
rely on retroactive and current memories. Director Valter Peres has
adeptly seized the text’s purposes, focusing on effective scenic movement
and an effective play of light, resulting in a highly visual and
physically beautiful performance.
And what an amazing performance by the great actor Belarmino Ramo!. He
plays Joe Sylvia, né José Silva, a Terceiran widower from Serreta who
immigrated to the town of Tulare in California’s San Joaquin Valley.
Given his extreme isolation, he lives apart from family members, who only
visit according to schedule. Dissatisfied, unassimilated and
misunderstood, in a succession of flashbacks he revisits his island
memories, on the one hand – and, on the other, critically questions his
daily American life. Without the ranch that had been his livelihood, and
with his family rent asunder, Joe sits perplexed, bewildered by the
world; he does not understand his children (naturalized Americans), nor
grasp changes in the Azores resulting from the April 25, 1974, Carnation
Revolution.
Two utterly beautiful love stories span the play: Joe Sylvia and Mary’s,
in their redemptive, tough love; and John and Danny’s, in their
subversive, homosexual love – two stories that will have tragic outcomes,
however: Mary succumbs to breast cancer, while John dies of AIDS.
Astonishing interpretations come from Frederico Madeira and Hélder
Xavier, amazing supporting performances by Mimi Bretão and Carla Soares,
and the most positive of nods to the emotive and expressive Filomena
Ferreira.
In this act of courage that is the making of theater nowadays, the
rapport between Alpendre and its audience could not possibly have been
better. It is a group that continuously and continually renews itself and
provides the public service of lifting the veils from our souls.

Author Victor Rui Dores, a native of Santa Cruz da Graciosa, is an Azorean
educator, writer, actor, director, poet, essayist and literary critic. He
earned his licenciatura in Modern Languages and Literatures at the
University of Lisbon, and teaches in Horta, Faial.

Nota: This review was first
published in Diário Insular on 26 Oct 2016 at:
www.diarioinsular.pt/version/1.1/r16/?cmd=noticia&id=85913

Translator Katharine F. Baker, a second-generation native Californian
whose paternal ancestors hailed from Flores and São Jorge, earned degrees
from the University of California-Berkeley and the University of Maryland,
and later studied Portuguese at the University of Pittsburgh. She and
Diniz Borges co-translated Álamo Oliveira’s novel Já Não Gosto de
Chocolates into English as I No Longer Like Chocolates (Portuguese
Heritage Publications of California, 2006). The translator gratefully
acknowledges the assistance of Emanuel Melo of the University of Toronto.
Área de anexos