Gabriel (Antonio Vega) and Antonietta (Ana Graham) discuss life, love, and fascism in WORKING ON A SPECIAL DAY (photo by Carol Rosegg)
59E59 Theaters
59 East 59th St. between Park & Madison Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 17, $35
212-279-4200
www.59e59.org
It’s May 8, 1938, and there’s a parade making its way through the streets of Rome celebrating Adolf Hitler’s visit with Benito Mussolini as the Fascist leaders plot their takeover of Europe. A bored housewife, Antonietta (Ana Graham), is left alone by her husband and kids, cleaning the apartment and doing the laundry while everyone else heads out to the festivities. After her parrot flies out of its cage and out the window, Antonietta tracks it down in the apartment of a stranger, Gabriel (Antonio Vega), the only other person remaining in the complex. Unbeknownst to Antonietta, Gabriel was about to blow his brains out until she suddenly showed up. Soon the two lonely souls are sharing secrets and more in the offbeat yet engaging Working on a Special Day. The seventy-five-minute show was adapted and translated by Graham, Vega, and Danya Taymor from Ettore Scola’s Academy Award–nominated 1977 film, Una giornata particolare, which starred Sophia Loren as Antonietta, Marcello Mastroianni as Gabriele, and John Vernon as Antonietta’s husband (played onstage by Vega also). The intriguing drama takes place in small black box theater in which two of the walls and a pair of doorways are like chalkboards that Graham and Vega constantly draw on, creating windows, telephones, a birdcage, and more. They also make all the sound effects themselves. Thus, when Graham makes the sound of a telephone, Vega draws one on the wall and pretends to answer it. It’s an odd conceit that grows more endearing as the two characters spend more time together and get to know each other much better. Although it’s not interactive or participatory, it is warm and welcoming; when the two actors first appear, the house lights are on, and they change into their costumes using actual seats in the audience, as if crowd and performer are one and the same. A coproduction of the New York–based Play Company and Mexico City’s Por Piedad Teatro Foundation, Working on a Special Day has been extended at 59E59 through February 17.