At night, in the desert, Gabriela lies in her backyard, keeping vigil against the cacti creeping closer to the house. Other times, she flirts with the Moon. The Moon, as he himself readily admits, is a flirty kind of fellow:
MOON: Shakespeare called me inconstant.
GABRIELA: I see why.
MOON: I never recovered from that. The bastard!
But the Moon isn’t her only suitor. Resident horny teenager, Martin, also fancies his chances with the woman whose ass makes him ‘hallucinate’ – particularly with his rival at such a disadvantage:
MARTIN (to the Moon): You’re incontinent, Shakespeare said.
MOON: ‘Inconstant’ not ‘incontinent,’ you little fart!
Elsewhere, a parallel seduction is playing out between Gabriela’s Cat and a roving Coyote:
CAT: After you’ve swallowed my moist outer layers – you can chew my heart muscles and give your jaws a real workout. Take you all night to eat my thighs.
[…]
COYOTE: Hey Cat, I’ll knock you ’round so hard, all nine of your lives will have orgasms.
All the while, Gabriela waits for her soldier husband, Benito, to return home from the field. Benito is haunted by his experiences in the (then, recent) first Gulf War, refusing to talk about them. He, like the others, just wants to make love. But Gabriela is determined to dig out the shrapnel, the barbed wire from his psyche. This won’t be the homecoming he’s hoping for.
You may have already guessed from the above excerpts – or, indeed, the play’s title – that one of the chief preoccupations in References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot is sex. Sex and death – and longing. The play is often very funny, but at its heart is a lyrical melancholy that’s equally, if not more compelling. Rivera’s writing is, well, beautiful.
The play is also something of a homecoming for this reviewer, as its previous run at the Tap Gallery last year was the first show I reviewed for ArtsHub. Half of its cast reprise their roles here, with Olivia Stambouliah (Gabriela), Stephen Multari (Benito) and Taryn Brine (Cat) all returning. While all were excellent then, this time I think they may be even better. The new faces – Arka Das (Martin), iOTA (Coyote) and Lani John Tupu (Moon) – all bring something distinctive to their roles, with Tupu’s world-weary Moon and iOTA’s bestial Coyote particular revelations. What’s less surprising, perhaps, given the latter’s inclusion in the cast, is the musicality of this production, a definite triumph for director Anthony Skuse, though I didn’t expect the other performers to be such competent musicians, with Brine especially playing a mean – or rather soulful – clarinet. Rita Carmody’s relatively simple set design makes good use of the theatre’s limited space, with the stage strikingly buried under mounds of red (bloodstained?) sand. Impressive music (Juan Carlos Rios), lighting (Verity Hampson) and sound design (Jeremy Silver) round out this surrealist orchestra, all harmoniously brought together thanks to the maestro-like efforts of stage manager Melissa Qutami.
I seem to have seen a lot of very good theatre lately, written a lot of positive reviews. Hopefully, soon, I’ll come across a stinker, because I’m fast running out of superlatives. Anyway, in this case, maybe it makes better sense to let Rivera have the last word:
GABRIELA: Before you go, explain my dream to me.
MOON: It’s a dream about soul mates.
GABRIELA: Who never agree? Who misinterpret?
MOON: You two go deep. So the wounds go deep. You give a person so much, you rearrange them. You rewrite them. He’s your creation. You’re his.
References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot
By José Rivera
Venue: SBW Stables Theatre, Nimrod Street, Kings Cross
Season: 23 September to 17 October 2009
