Laura Watson and Rey Torres. Photo by Mark-Brian Sonna.

Adrian Godinez and Janye Watson. Photo by Mark-Brian Sonna.

  

24 hrs. of Love

by Joaquin and Serafin Quintero
Alejandro de la Costa

Presented by MBS Productions

February 5 - 20

at Stone Cottage
Addison Theatre Centre
15650 Addison Road
Addison, TX 75001
214-477-4942

$18-$21

8pm Thursdays-Saturdays & Feb 14; 2:30pm Feb 13 & 14
Runtime: 90 minutes with one intermission

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, 24 hrs. of Love is a charming love story. Make that two charming love stories.

MBS Productions bills 24 hrs. of Love as a "new translation" and a "world premiere." The latter is the backstory of Juanito and Petra, who are minor characters in the new translation portion of the evening: A Sunny Morning by Joaquín and Serafin Álvarez Quintero. The Quintero brothers were Spanish dramatists who penned more than 200 plays, and were credited with contributing greatly to the revival of Spanish theater by offering light-hearted comedies that were departures from the realistic dramas popular in Madrid.

Alejandro de la Costa, a regular at MBS who wrote last year's Adam and Eve in the Garden of Delights, or Love, took A Sunny Morning and extended its timeframe, taking the audience back to a rainy afternoon before the sunny morning. That’s when we first meet Juanito and Petra in a park in Madrid. Both are young caregivers for elderly people. They are in the park on their afternoon break while their charges rest. At lights up, Petra is on a park bench, weeping. That’s how Juanito discovers her. After she asks for his handkerchief, they embark on a winding conversation. They share their daily routines and information about their elderly employers. When their talk turns to poetry, things begin to get more intimate, ending in a soul-baring recitation of a poem Juanito has written.

Later that evening, we see Juanito and Petra with their elderly employers, hoping to cross paths again and introducing the audience to Don Gonzalo and Doña Laura, the two main characters in A Sunny Morning. For this production, it has been given a new translation by MBS Productions founder, Mark-Brian Sonna, who also directs 24 hrs. of Love.

As Juanito, Rey Torres is delightful, cute and charming—all earnestness and sincerity in his interest in Petra. Juanito is a poet, and Torres paints him as a romantic. Unfortunately, it’s hard to understand what he sees in Laura Watson’s dull, flat Petra. Watson makes Petra more no-nonsense than giving her a flirty coyness that would intrigue a romantic like Juanito. The questions she asks him come across as an interrogation instead of interest leading to infatuation. At the end of Juanito’s highly personal poem, Petra runs out of the park, but Watson shows no emotional journey on Petra’s part that would inspire such a reaction.

Act II is A Sunny Morning, the Quintero brothers’ one-act play written in 1905 and set here in 1919. Don Gonzalo and Doña Laura meet in the park one morning. Juanito and Petra leave them on their own to share a bench, reluctantly. As their conversation unfolds, it turns out they have much more in common than their daily strolls. Their conversation is lively and far more interesting than their young caregivers, especially Dona Laura’s hilarious reactions to the belligerent old Don.

Janye Anderson is fun to watch as Doña Laura, masterful in her reactions. Her time on the bench alone with the birds, before Don Gonzalo comes along, proves you don’t have to be in your 20s to excel at physical comedy. Her costumes (designed by de la Costa) are fabulous fringed shawls and a fun straw sun hat.

One of the biggest problems in the play was the decision not to cast Don Gonzalo age appropriately. Both Gonzalo and Laura are supposed to be in their 70s. Anderson is appropriately cast, although perhaps a little spry to need a caregiver to look after her. A gray wig over her blonde hair with its perky, flippy cut would have created the proper character. There wasn’t anything to help 29-year-old Adrian Godinez age 40 years. Adding gray to his hair and giving him a cane only advanced him so far, still falling about 30 years short.

Sonna explained his rationale in casting the young actor as an old man in his director’s notes, but it just doesn’t work. Godinez’s Gonzalo is hardly "in the winter" of his life. He is strong physically, with a booming voice, and obviously doesn’t need anyone to take care of him. In the end, not having an age-appropriate Gonzalo detracts from the poignancy of the love story that unfolds between him and Doña Laura. Instead, Doñna Laura looks like she is reminiscing with her son.

The small-scale 24 hrs. of Love works well in the intimacy of Addison Theatre Centre’s Stone Cottage. The audience could have been casual people-watchers in the park. The set, designed by de la Costa, is simple, but enough. A bird bath in the center gives an interesting focal point to a clever series of moments between Juanito and Petra in the first scene. Sonna makes the most of the limited lighting in the Stone Cottage, especially during Juanito’s poem.

Juanito and Petra. Gonzalo and Laura. Their love stories on their own are charming and work seamlessly together, blending young love with old, a new story with a classic. It’s a shame that half of each couple was badly cast. The right counterparts for Juanito and Laura would have given their stories power and emotional impact.