An off-Broadway Review: Zanahorias (Carrots)!

I had the amazing opportunity to go to New York for a few days this year and decided to time my vacation with the running of Denise's latest off-broadway production, 'Zanahorias', a bilingual play written by Antonio Zancada and directed by Alfredo Galvan.

The play starts out with two men and a woman, who was sitting on a chair watching them as they played a game. The game seemed like a one-up game and drama begins to unfold as the loser exacts suspicion regarding the fact that he tends to loose every time they play the game, wondering what was going on. The masked woman, Madame of the Sacred Heart, promised the king that the next match shall be the greatest match ever and so the story begins.

The play has quite a few surprising twists and turns in it as time goes out as we watch the mystery of Madame unfold as subtle (and not-so-subtle) forshadowing begins to catch up with its shadow. Hints that were given earlier in the play later made much more sense as the drama, tragedy, melodrama, comedy...piece of fun literature...unfolds.

The play, while a period piece, had a very modern feel to it and even used modern words within context of the discussion. They wittingly focus on intelligence, displaying such humorous (and sadly quite often true in the time period) examples such as the Marquette of "Aaaaah", a wealthy very well-known woman and lady-in-waiting to the Queen, not being able to read very well but the Countess of "Eh", a lower ranking and deemed "easy" right off (what else would you consider the King's concubine) being able to not only read fluently, but speak multiple languages as well.

I don't want to give the whole plot line away, because those of you who are in New York Saturday and Sunday should really stop by the Duke theater on 42nd between 8th and 9th Ave and watch a funny story play out as revenge's story, previously untold.

The cast was really amazing and seemed to be a good group of people. While this was a small cast of six people, each one brought a new and different characterization. Likely the most humorous addition to the play, outside of the main plotline, was the addition of Josefine, a Bulgarian house maiden played by Iva Gocheva, new to off-broadway. Josefine only spoke Bulgarian and would randomly interject during scenes with craziness that no one, but apparently the Countess of Eh!, could understand. The confused faces from the cast as they tried and failed to make out what message she was trying to get across.

Oh! the first King of Puritania, played by Francisco Reyes, was just as humorous always attempting to be clever and have the upper hand on any of his subjects. Francisco's work was very natural and fluent, as was the entire cast.

And as one might expect, the most intriguing character in the show, who seemed to take perverse pleasure in the agony of others, was Madame of the Sacred Heart. Denise delivered a stellar performance playing a wide range of emotions; going in one second from pleased and happy with the outcome of her game to outraged but always quickly trying to figure out where to move her chess piece on the great game of life.

The last three shows this weekend are Spanish performances, which is what the play was originally written in. The actors rehearsed in both English and Spanish at the same time. According to Denise, as she sat down to do the memorization in both languages she found that, due to repetition during rehearsals, she had the entire piece nearly memorized. Francisco mentioned that the production, while the same outcome, feels different in the native language and flows somewhat differently. It'll be an exciting show to go see during the Spanish production in its original form, so you really shouldn't miss out--not with only three performances left!

For more information on 'Zanahorias', please visit their website at "http://www.zanahoriasenbroadway.com/".