Frida Kahlo's story told in exceptional solo show at Union Arts Center
Theater review
No matter what we're looking for in art, what we see is ourselves.
But what if yourself is what you're desperately looking for? Can you still see it?
In "Frida…a Self-Portrait," the solo show running at Union Arts Center through June 28, Brazilian playwright/performer Vanessa Severo refracts her own identity through the life and times of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, with whom she feels a profound kinship. Through this exploration of an artist famous for her self-portraiture, can Severo truly see herself? Can we see her?
The play's framing is twofold: Kahlo, near the end of her life in 1954, sharing life stories with an American journalist about her famous home, Casa Azul; and Severo, looking back on her own life through the lens of Kahlo's work and legacy.
That legacy has largely been defined by her agonies, of which Kahlo endured many: polio in her youth, the horrific bus accident that nearly killed her, the chronic pain and morphine usage of her later days, the marriage(s) with fellow Mexican painter Diego Rivera that overshadowed her own legacy throughout her life and far beyond. (Rivera isn't mentioned at all until we're well into the play, to which I say: Hell yeah.)
But, oh, the ecstasies. Kahlo lived in vibrant color, with wholehearted passion, transmuting pain into divine craft and demanding to be seen - and valued - honestly.
"Frida…a Self-Portrait" premiered in 2014 at The Living Room Theatre in Kansas City, Mo., returned to Kansas City Repertory Theatre in 2019 and has been performed around the country ever since.
While falling prey to some common bio-play pitfalls (mostly clunky exposition), "Frida…a Self-Portrait" does what it does exceptionally well.
Elements of Kahlo's work infuse the piece without feeling heavy-handed: red ribbons echo the red lines anchoring paintings like "Henry Ford Hospital," and the show's final image suggests Kahlo's famous self-portrait "The Two Fridas."
Severo and director Joanie Schultz have crafted storytelling that is simple and efficient, using ingenious, low-tech stagecraft to zip through the many characters in Kahlo's life with clarity and humor. Severo's talent as a choreographer and movement director shines through in passages that physicalize large swaths of Kahlo's life, giving clarity to her miscarriages, affairs and sexuality.
Through it all, Severo intercuts stories about her relationship with her own physicality, her immigrant parents, her relationship to defiance.
The play sags a bit when Severo spends too long in this self-aware direct address - telling the audience exactly what she was thinking in her creative process and why she's telling us what she's telling us.
As presented, the play is billed as Severo's exploration of the parallels between her life and Kahlo's, and these moments seem to simply insist on those parallels rather than investigate them. The parallels are there and they are rich, between Kahlo and Severo and any other person screaming (metaphorically and literally, in this play's case) to be understood and to understand themselves, using whatever creative vocabulary they have. It's agony, it's ecstasy.
Or am I just seeing myself?
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