La Lupe: Mi Vida,
Mi Destino
My Life, My Destiny
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| Sully Diaz as "La Lupe". | |
La Lupe:
Mi Vida, Mi Destino
Written by Carmen Rivera
Directed by Luis Caballero
Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre
At Theatre Four 424 West 55th Street, between 9/10th Ave
Telecharge (212) 239-6200
Theatre Four Box Office (212) 354-1293
Opened June 27, 2001
Reviewed by Edward Rubin August 29, 2001
Before the destruction of the World Trade Center, when theatre could still outshout everyday reality, Miriam Colon's Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre had a hit on its hands. Obie award winning playwright, Carmen Rivera, reaching back into recent musical history, had resurrected La Lupe, the wild eyed, hip swaying, bosom tossing, Cuban salsa singer who during the 60s and 70s was considered the Queen of Latin Music. Surprisingly, the demand for seats was so heavy that the company had to move to a larger space to accommodate the crowds. And still the show sold out.
Though the name La Lupe is unfamiliar to most people, the singer's albums - some thirty of them, the best known recorded with Mongo Santamaria and Tito Puente - sold in the millions. With frequent incendiary television appearances on the Dick Cavette and Merv Griffin Show, La Lupe's popularity - she was an early crossover artist - continued to blossom. Then, all of the sudden, at what seemed to be the height of her fame, La Lupe disappeared totally from the musical radar screen. Gone from the airwaves, the singer's mystique, nurtured by a few die-hard fans, underground and in whispers, continued to live on. Slowly but surely the singer La Lupe achieved cult status.
As an early admirer of La Lupe - I still treasure my one album, "Tito Puente Swings -The Exciting Lupe Sings" - I had always wondered what had happened to La Lupe. Why was it that I no longer heard anything about her. A voice like that doesn't disappear without a fight. Thanks to Rivera's play, "La Lupe: My Life, My Destiny", a biographically tinged, musical nightclub act, in which actress comedienne Sully Diaz channels La Lupe, the Latina bombshell, surrounded by a cast of four and four fabulous backup musicians, is brought back to life. With her history laid at our feet, albeit decades later, my question is answered.
While the September 11 terrorist attack had temporarily silenced my hand (which explains the length of time it took this review to appear) and darkened many a theatre, the good news is that "La Lupe: My Life, My Destiny" is alive and well. It appears to have weathered the storm quite nicely. It is as if La Lupe, no stranger to trouble and tragedy in her own life, looking down from heaven where she moved to at age 52 in 1992, had said, "Enough is enough. Let's get on with the show." Not wanting to say No to La Lupe, once again lines are forming at the box office. As for me, mercifully, I seem to be healing, albeit a bit too slowly for my taste.
Strangely, or perhaps not so strangely - star power does this - 'My Destiny' with its talented cast of actors and actresses, all of whom inhabit some 25 multiple roles, is essentially a one-woman show. It is Sully Diaz on a bare stage wrapping 14 of La Lupe's most popular songs around 13 of playwright Carmen Rivera's wonderful monologues. Subtract the play, keep the musicians and you would have one fine nightclub act that could well pack the Oak Room at the Algonguin.
Remarkably, Miss Diaz, equally adept at drama and comedy (yes, she does do stand up which allows her to work the audience into a frenzy), gives a high-octane performance despite never having sung professionally before being cast as La Lupe. With Olympian split second timing, Diaz's vocal calisthenics allow her to shift effortlessly from song to song, scene to scene. In "Todo", an upbeat salsa song, she sings of a life that has given her everything. In "Que Te Pedi," clearly an audience favorite, Diaz in a slow, heartrending plea tells her lover all she wants him to be is honest, faithful, and to understand her love. The evening is filled with these incredible singing and acting shifts that have us going from tears to laughter and back again.
In many ways, the short and dramatic trajectory of La Lupe's
life heavily studded with euphoric highs and staggering lows, reminds one
of the trials and tribulations of Judy Garland, Billy Holiday and Edith
Piaf. All were consummate singers, perfectionists in their fields, mixed
husband and lovers with drugs in varying amounts and commanded a legion
of near fanatical fans who followed them to their bitter end and after.
And all died young. We seem to feel they lived for us and died for us and
in between celebrated every inch of our lives.
As the play opens we meet La Lupe at Lehman College in the Bronx where she
is taking a class in writing. Her professor (Gilberto Arribas) is teaching
the difference between fiction and reality. For her non-fiction assignment
La Lupe writes the story of her life. Too fantastical a journey for her
professor to believe, La Lupe is given an F for her efforts. Using this
highly unlikely but totally true story as a jumping off point, La Lupe in
a series of flashbacks, insistently relives her life, through song and scene,
for the benefit of her professor, the audience and in no small way herself.
Moments later we find ourselves face to face with a young La Lupe. We are back in Santiago, Cuba, where the singer was born. La Lupe has just won a talent contest and is desperately trying to persuade a sympathetic and loving father (Jose Cheo Oliveras) and an angry, seemingly jealous stepmother (Marly Rivera) that teaching is not for her. She wants to be a singer. Singing is in her blood and that's that. In what appears to be a hop, skip and a jump - it is now 1962 and La Lupe already a star in her own country, is working in New York with Mongo Santamaria the legendary Afro-Cuban percussionist - she is 'discovered' by Tito Puente (Jose Cheo Oliveras). Young, naïve and still unsure of her talent, La Lupe, with the mentoring of Puente, begins her climb to stardom. Along the way she acquires a new husband, two children, a mansion in New Jersey, two cars, a his and a hers, and a lot of jewelry and furs.
While the audience roots for La Lupe to fly even higher as an early Santeria prophesy foretold, it was not to be. Just as her rise was guaranteed, her fall is inevitable. At the height of her career La Lupe's life began to unravel. Puente, tired of the singer's histrionics and not about to listen to the demands of a woman and a black one at that- by now with star billing she considers herself his equal - drops La Lupe from his orchestra and takes on her rival, the less combative Celia Cruz. Shortly thereafter, in what is hinted at in this play as an unwritten blacklist, La Lupe's calls are not returned and the record companies turn their back on her. Adding insult to injury, the singer loses her home, husband and career and, with two children finds herself, after an accident, unable to walk and on welfare
In a totally unexpected turn of events - like her entire melodramatic life - La Lupe, "healed" by a visiting member of the evangelical church, leaves her beloved Santeria religion and becomes a Pentecostal minister and preacher in the south Bronx. By the end of the play the audience, emotionally drained from the evening's tumultuous journey, is resuscitated as we watch the indomitable La Lupe, against all odds, pick herself up and dust herself off.
While I have made much of this being a one-woman show - I mean who can hold a candle to Sully Diaz and La Lupe - one must acknowledge the play's supporting cast and of course the fine direction of Luis Caballero, all surely needed to keep Miss Diaz from whirling off into space. Alas, the performance level of the cast is mixed. On the downside, sticking out like broken thumb in a wooden splint, are the amateurish cardboard appearances of Gilberto Arribas. Each role he tries to assume - and he plays seven characters - tends to sap the play of any magic and illusion. In all fairness, as written, his characters have little, if any, meat to them. But fairness aside, on the other hand, the other actors saddled with a few minor roles themselves, fare quite well.
In the middle range, and perfectly cast at that, is Jose Cheo Oliveras.
Whether Oliveras is La Lupe's father, Tito Puente or one of his 4 other
roles, he very deftly manages to create a uniquely individuated character.
On the upside, fast approaching the stratosphere, is the work of Marly Rivera.
Mercifully, whether playing La Lupe's stepmother, a nurse, or the professor
that finally does recognize La Lupe, Rivera puts back all of the magic and
illusion that Arribas's performances have stolen from it. Each character
she plays is so finely honed, so terrifically alive, that one could almost
feel the blood coursing through their veins. Rivera is a-star-in-waiting.
Not once does she lose the character to the actress. There is no higher
compliment.
The evening that I attended the show, at each song Miss Diaz sang, a knowing audience, eyes swelling with tears of love and recognition, filled the theatre with waves of applause. Some people whistled, others sang along softly with Miss Diaz, and all hearts thrilled. Our La Lupe was given back to us in all her glory. Here she was in the full throttle that we love to remember. Like a fury she commanded the stage, roamed the theatre. Barking, moaning, whining, yelling, pounding her chest, pulling off her wig, kicking off her shoes, throwing her jewelry into the audience, Diaz, now La Lupe, lived each song to its fullest. Words didn't just appear - she gave birth to them. It was a heady evening. We all recognized how wonderful La Lupe was, how absolutely wonderful Sully Diaz is, and how fast the last thirty years of our lives have fled. At the end of the evening we all stood in admiration. Nobody doubted that we were truly given a gift, a rarity in any of the arts. There it was, as clear as day; La Lupe's star was resurrected, Sully Diaz's born. [Rubin]
Editor's note: Performances in English are on Tuesdays and Wednesdays,
and all others are in Spanish.
Edward Rubin is a senior editor for "Manhattan Arts International" and a regular contributor to the "New Art Examiner" and "The Hispanic Outlook." He is also a long standing member of the New York Drama Desk, the Outer Critics Circle and AICA (The American Section of the International Association of Art Critics). He can be reached at erubin5000@aol.com.
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