Whom have you ever dreamt of being?
A movie or TV soap opera star, a handsome or beautiful being, a film director or famous cinema maker or someone living a more adventuresome and glamorous than yourself?
This is one of the themes touched on in an excellent duo performance by veteran actress -playwright-director Carioca (Sao Paulo resident) Susana Ribeiro,55 and Gaucho (native of Rio Grande do Sul state) actor ( who appears in the Netflix series ‘ Senna’) Nicolas Vargas,30, at the Teatro Poeira in Ms. Ribeiro´s play “I Dreamt About You.”
Their last performances locally of what is reportedly Ribeiro´s first(—and hopefully not last –) play will be next Tuesday (24) and Wednesday (25) at Rio´s equivalent of NYC´s Off-Broadway, Teatro Peoria in Botafogo.
“Dirt Theatre” (Teatro Poeira), founded by Brazil´s outstanding actresses Marieta Severo and Andrea Beltrao, is a showplace of excellent acting and plays which are more on the artistic than the popular side and this comic-tragic play well fits into this category.
“Sonhei com Voce “is male-female encounter in the tradition of Arnaldo Jabour´s “Eu Te Amo” and the iconic “Last tango in Paris” but without the onstage/ on camera eroticism of both films. It is obviously written from a feminist viewpoint, which should earn Ms. Ribeiro “brownie points” if the play ever is translated to foreign theaters and the female character is more sexually astute than her young male intruder/visitor.
The 70-minute epic starts as a light comedy: when a university male student,30, who lives with his mother in the relatively richer zone of Rio de Janeiro (Botafogo) and is filming a documentary for his university course enters into a 55-year-old physiotherapist´s suburban (read” poorer” in Brazil) apartment. His academic project is capturing on film the routines of others and Simone´s drab routine of working a five-day week, eight-hour day in a physiotherapy clinic in the center downtown is perfect for his requirements.
But rather than becoming a Brazilian candid camera, what started out as a documentary portrait of an aging unmarried female without offspring, the play goes deeper: portraying the lives, hopes, phantasies, sexual frustrations, dreams and sufferings of each character.
Impressive is how the change of tones of both Ms. Ribeiro (Simone) and Mr. Vargas (Daniel) from lightness to anger—resembling two opera singers in a duet– include the beautiful to fear, anger and frustration. Also impressive is the choreography onstage by the two versatile actors.
The play has had a short run in Sao Paulo prior to opening 25 May at Rio´s Teatro Poeira and it deserves to return to a longer run and national if not international tour in the humble opinion of a foreign-born theatergoer, who has sat through local “successes” which were not up to the quality of “I Dreamt About You.”