The Shakespeare Theatre’s “Frida..A Self Portrait” is a delight.
The subject is Frida Kahlo, the iconic Mexican painter known for boldly colored works that championed Mexican and indigenous culture and that also centered women’s experience. Kahlo’s lived a life of defiance and style in the face of injustice, personal suffering and marital infidelity.
Writer-performer Vanessa Severo’s captivating portrayal of Kahlo is a mixture of puppetry, dance, mime and magician’s sleight of hand.
A headboard stretches across the upstage wall with the legs of the bed splayed across the downstage apron. The space mixes clutter with trash. Suddenly, the trash is revealed to be clothing attached to a clothesline strung across the stage.
Throughout the performance, Severo employs the clothing to transform herself into different characters in Kahlo’s life. One minute, she is Kahlo’s disciplinarian father, who trained her to overcome her childhood polio. Putting on other outfits, she becomes Kahlo’s husband, painter Diego Rivera, or her sister.
Severo does not just change outfits. She manipulates and transforms both cloth and objects she interacts with. At one point, the clothesline itself becomes a trolley car. It crashes, crushing Frida’s spinal cord and pelvis.
Severo’s interaction with this mercurial world, created by the technical artists under the direction of Joanie Schultz, elevates the production to something magical and memorable.
“Frida Kahlo..A Self Portrait” communicates the pain and unfairness of the artist’s life without losing sight of its magic.
The production is on until Nov. 8. For tickets, visit The Shakespeare Theatre.
Gregory Ford is the Anacostia Coordinating Council Arts & Culture Critic. He is also an actor and singer. . He is also an actor and singer. He is a member of Verbal Gymnastics Playback Theater troupe. He has written for Capital Community News and continues to write for dctheaterarts.org, focusing on College and University Theater Productions. He is a clinical psychodrama practitioner. Mr. Ford lives in Northeast Boundary in Ward 7.
