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Regional Reviews: Chicago Frida ... A Self Portrait
What Ms. Severo goes through, on stage and off, in getting at the truth of her subject, is the main substance of the evening. But her joy and suffering become like a chrysalis from which she and the audience emerge near the end, which is the function of theatre, I suppose. We never see the Kahlo paintings and it doesn't really matter, because the writer/actress captures the painter's look so completely, and lives each emotion and sensation with Stradivarius-worthy precision in playing them all through so fully. The play debuted in 2020 and has run in six previous productions around the nation, starring the exemplary author, and it ought to go on for at least six more, in my opinion. The painter (1907-1954) born and raised in Mexico City, emerges after brief introductory remarks from Ms. Severo herself. And soon we are enmeshed in Kahlo's life, meeting her mestiza Mexican mother and German architect father, who busied himself slowly changing their 1904 home to his taste. (We also hilariously meet Ms. Severo's own sometimes battling parents, later in the game.) Way before that, the layers of crumbling paint on the walls become young Frida's delightful inspiration: layers of paint like pages in a book or, in this great performance, perhaps a French pastry (kids, don't eat lead paint). Her father restores her, as well, after polio's onset, commanding her through some homemade physical therapies with Teutonic resolve, interspersed with the calm and reasoned explanations of a parent's fretfulness. It probably sounds like a three-hankie film, but it's fresh as can be in this case. The climactic outfit of the evening is by Katherine Davis, and on Ms. Severo it's shocking and bizarre and hypnotizing. It truly is the story of the artist as a young woman. The stage reverberates not only with human suffering, clanging against our souls like hammer and anvil. But scene by scene, sparks fly upward to give us a fresh, defiant creative vision. It's big business, these days, to see a show about a young woman who rises to glory in spite of her many dreads and woes. And yet Frida ... A Self Portrait suddenly seems like the rosetta stone of it all. It should be the kind of play that I hate. But Ms. Severo makes the whole crazy story that arises really quite amazing. Sparks fly into her life and art as well, from trouble, heightening her independence and the agony and the ecstasy of it all. She goes to meet the famous painter Diego Rivera, whom she marries and divorces and remarries, even after an incalculable emotional injury to the relationship. But in their very first encounter, he mistakes her for a model and plants her in an anthemic mural he's painting. And she's swept up. We step back and get a drily dispassionate take on the young Frida after a terrible bus accident in her youth, from a doctor who casually explains (in front of her) to medical students that she should never try to have children (though she does try, heartbreakingly, over and over). Still, most of the story focuses very tightly on her and her vibrant personality. And she makes a lot of things make sense in our modern lives too: young women today who seem to correct and contradict elderly gay men at every turn suddenly all seem like endearing beacons of truth, thanks to Ms. Severo's outspoken and irresistible re-creation. And somehow a peaceful gaze remains, in many of her self portraits: revealing the final victor over all of that searing pain. Frida ... A Self Portrait runs through February 23, 2025, at Writers Theatre, 325 Tudor Ct., Glencoe IL. For tickets and information, please visit www.writerstheatre.org. Cast: Production Staff: * Denotes Member, Actors' Equity Association ** Denotes Member, Stage Directors and Choreographers Society *** Denotes Member, United Artists Local 829 |
