Icarus
Making clear the distinction between literal and metaphorical is a challenge for most artists working with myth. Mary Zimmerman’s best work succeeds because it’s so unflinchingly nonliteral: of course life doesn’t happen in and around a swimming pool; of course people don’t die when all the sand runs out of a bag. When the line between reality and metaphor is blurred, the audience starts asking the wrong questions: “Since when is chocolate an aphrodisiac?” or “What do you mean, ‘capture the sun’?” Magic realism, for example, has had to battle northern preconceptions that something can be magic or real but not both.
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Sanchez’s dueling mythologies stymie the best efforts of Teatro Vista’s able actors, designers, and director. Their earnestness and conviction come off as naivete–yet their take on the material is not quite simple enough to bring the audience along for the ride. There’s enough contemporary reality to interfere with the fictive dream but not quite enough to replace it.
