The Gardens of Anuncia is the capstone of a decades-long friendship. The musical is Composer/Lyricist Michael John LaChiusa's love letter to longtime collaborator Graciela Danielle, who acted as Director/Co-Choreographer for the Lincoln Center production.
The musical finds Anuncia, our Danielle proxy, talking in her garden on the evening she's receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award. The nostalgic atmosphere causes her to drift back and reflect on the people and experiences that made her into the woman she is. The wistfulness allows her memories to take centerstage, made vibrant by the women who raised her: Mami, Tia, and Granmama. What LaChiusa describes as a "fantasia on life" and "riff on the memory play" feels confined by traditional/Western theatrical sensibility, causing the show to feel more like an unfocused memoir.
"If I write a memoir, which I won't…" Anuncia quips at the audience. I chuckled. Not at the joke itself but rather at the irony that the joke implies what I was watching wasn't a memoir. "Riff on the memory play." Whenever this label is referenced, I think of The Glass Menagerie. How could I not? I went to theatre school. Like Anuncia, Menagerie also has a character narrating the play by speaking directly to the audience. LaChiusa riffs on the device by splitting the character of Anuncia: our Anuncia narrates and comments on the memories in the Present while a Younger Anuncia experiences the memory in the Past. However, there is a magic lost from the Tennessee Williams classic. Because Tom, the narrator of The Glass Menagerie, is performed by one actor, we believe the character exists simultaneously in both the Past and the Present. The audience watches as Tom actively lives in the memories as he's remembering—simultaneously existing in the plot and witnessing it. Despite the production staging's best efforts, the Narrator, Anuncia, never felt fully immersed in the world of her memory, which made it hard for me to accept both the memory narrative and the larger theatrical narrative. When forced to choose, the memory narrative was more compelling. Because of this, the narration felt distracting at best and frustrating at worst.
The Gardens of Anuncia is a piece with compelling content told by a storyteller with a compelling perspective that ultimately ended up as a collection of stories that, while captivating, were, at times, wandering. While I appreciate and celebrate theatrical explorations that don't follow a traditional Aristotelian form, they need a form of Dionysian structure (that is, a structure that makes sense more so emotionally or viscerally than logically) that doesn't leave the audience asking, "Why does this story go here? Why did that song follow that story?"
I'm continually fascinated by narrative structures that play with time and the order of events.
The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros' classic novel, which tells of Esperanza Cordero's development through vignettes, first inspired me to consider the structure of storytelling. Because I received Esperanza's story in snapshots, my heart and mind were consistently surprised and challenged with each new story. I could better look at the big picture of Esperanza's evolution while remaining focused on the smallest strokes that create that big picture. Novels that continued to feed my curiosity through school included Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold and Carmen Maria Machado's In the Dreamhouse. Then, in college, I discovered the work of Michael John LaChiusa and saw how he was bringing this kind of storytelling to musical theater with musicals such as Hello, Again! and The Wild Party.
LaChiusa does his best work in vignettes, and his Latin American inspiration beautifully lends itself to a magical realist structure—an expectation that the musical playfully mocks. "I don't know why Americans are so obsessed with magic realism. In my garden, magic realism is reality." Anuncia implies that the emphasis on "magic" is the inclination of people who don't experience magic daily. That is not Anuncia's life. She says in her garden, "Flowers fall and deer speak." If Magic is commonplace, why did The Gardens of Anuncia feel afraid to let its Magic influence its storytelling structure? Instead, LaChiusa attempts to weave his vignettes together through a vague and sometimes sloppily included narrative where Anuncia needs to purge her memories to accept her lifetime achievement award. The Magic could've provided more exciting ways to create a throughline that resonates emotionally rather than logically.
Time
It's no secret that I have beef with narrators. Most times, when I realize that a show has a narrator, I'm immediately thrust out of it. , I think of including a narrator as a way to spoon-feed the audience context instead of putting it into the dialogue. In Garden's case, LaChiusa uses his narrator, Anuncia, to cement the show as a memory play. Narrator Anuncia speaks to the audience in the Present and watches a younger version of herself living the memories while she comments on them. While this is probably the most straightforward way to instill a sense of omniscience and hindsight in the memories as they happen, I find it ultimately uninteresting.
"In my garden, magic realism is reality."
LaChiusa uses the Magic to allow the Present to commune with the Past. I posit that the more magical experience would be the Past existing simultaneously with the Present. Why can't one actress portray Anuncia in all aspects of her life? She can speak to the audience as her Present Self and live through her memories as her Past Self. Then, the show can seamlessly flow through the Past, Present, and maybe even the Future without explaining itself. As her mother chastises a child, Anuncia, she can turn to the audience and speak with the wisdom of a much older version of herself, describing through hindsight what the moment means to her. This could provide the character of Anuncia with a more active journey as she processes her memories as they're happening.
Space
The Garden. It's in the title. The show begins with Anuncia speaking to the audience and welcoming them into her garden. She even assigns plants to sections of the audience (the houses left are the anemones, and next to them are the tomatoes). The show ends with Anuncia speaking to the garden again, praising it for its resilience, equating the bugs and deer threatening the garden to the war and heartbreak threatening herself. This attention to space that bookends the musical left me with a familiarity with the garden. Unfortunately, as we drifted to the memory narrative, the Garden became a forgotten friend. The Garden seems to be a setting exclusively utilized by Narrator Anuncia and relegated to only existing in the Present. I was hungry for the garden to be a character—a vital part of the storytelling rather than a single setting.
"In my garden, magic realism is reality."
Anuncia speaks of the garden as a place that heals her and inspires reflection. I wished that as we watched Anuncia go through the events that shaped her life, she returned to the garden to process and reflect. Our Safe Place. Our Anchor. Our Haven of Reflection. She can speak to the flowers and deer as they guide her through her life's journey. Actually, I don't want her to return to the garden. If the garden's comfort and safety give Anuncia the strength to experience her life, I want the garden to transform into each setting she requires. The set design attempts to achieve this effect, but without mention of the garden, it felt like memories were happening on the Garden Set rather than the garden itself transforming.
The musical teased us with the Magic of the garden. Narrator Anuncia has two scenes with deer: a charming dancer and, later, his less lovely brother. These scenes didn't feel woven into the plot, though. They felt ornamental, like an attempt to convince the audience that Narrator Anuncia had lessons to learn, too! The Magic of the garden was not a vital part of the story's bones and, therefore, was not woven through it.
Rhythm
Dance is a vital part of Danielle's life and, therefore, that of her theatrical counterpart, Anuncia. Ballet put Young Anuncia on the track of devotion and art. Consequently, I wanted dance to be vital to the musical's storytelling. Of course, once Anuncia discovers ballet, she dazzles the audience with a solo. There are also a few musical numbers that use choreography, whether diegetic, as in the case of Mami's trips to the Tango Club, or extradiegetic, as in the case of Tia's suitors dancing to win her affection. These instances were, again, ornamental. The choreography was not treated as its storytelling device but as an accompaniment. I found it ironic that a dance as narrative as ballet wasn't being used to tell the story.
"In my garden, magic realism is reality."
There are so many aspects of growing up that can't be told. They can only be seen and experienced somatically. How can dance tell the story of Anuncia growing into her body? How can dance tell the story of the trauma taking root in Anuncia's body? If the Garden is a haven of reflection, dance can also be used in that space to reflect physically. Rather than dragging us back into the Present after each vignette, Anuncia can process the memory she witnessed through her dance. Let her use her art to tell her story.
When questioned by her mother, Anuncia describes ballet as "flying" and an "escape." How can the audience see that truth rather than having Anuncia tell it to us?
Graciela Danielle has lived an astonishing life. You can feel LaChiusa's admiration for his friend in each note and word of The Gardens of Anuncia. But what brings a love letter to the level of artistic exploration? Whenever shows are based on historical truth, one must always figure out the story underneath the history. From my perspective, The Gardens of Anuncia was the story of the development of a person during a time of great political and personal unrest. With the love and guidance of the women in her family, Anuncia can become a strong, loving, and driven woman. I think LaChiusa's love for his friend and his want to allow her to tell her own story distracted him from the story itself. While I enjoyed the musical (LaChiusa KNOWS how to write a damn song), there were missed opportunities to create something fresh and innovative that transcends the love letter the musical initially set out to be.
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