'Miranda' meanders

El Centro's offering hit-and-miss

By BRAD WEISMANN/Colorado Daily Theatre Critic

There's a great play about Carmen Miranda - it just hasn't been written yet.

This is the bulk of the problem with "The Beatification of Carmen Miranda," currently on the boards at Denver's El Centro Su Teatro. The script, written by Sol Almeida Biderman, is a fantasy based on the life of the "Brazilian Bombshell," the singer/film star/camp icon of the 1940s best remembered for her vivacious personality, mangled English and towering, fruit-laden headgear. Beneath that charming veneer was a complex and genuine talent whose health was shattered by the vagaries of fame and fortune, leading to her premature death in 1955.

Biderman's work replaces her popular image with another that is just as incomplete and fabricated, conflating many details of her life and indulging in more than a few unaccountable inaccuracies. These flaws are compounded by a production that seems under-rehearsed and intermittently spiritless.

The play opens with the remembrances of the now-indigent, alcoholic Teddy (Hugo E. Carbajal), a fictitious creation who serves as Carmen's bandleader and swishy confidante. He takes us back to the day of Carmen's death, which is inexplicably given as the date of the liberation of Paris in World War II - 11 years before her actual demise. Debilitated by a dependence on pills and alcohol (which didn't really begin for Miranda until 1945), this Carmen can barely put on a show, even with the additional presences of her sister Amalia (in real life, Aurora) and her neglectful and abusive American husband Carlton Cavendish (really David Sebastian).

Reference is made to the then-recent, tragic deaths of actors Carole Lombard and Trevor Howard in a plane crash - which would be a shock to the latter, as he died of natural causes in 1988. Biderman means Leslie Howard, whose plane was shot down by the Luftwaffe over the Bay of Biscay in an incident two years and thousands of miles removed from the Nevada crash in which Lombard perished. Sloppy contrivances like these undermine the playwright's credibility to no end.

But why quibble - it's a fantasy, right? Well, even those unfamiliar with those details will find little that is compelling in "Miranda." The play's contrived machinations fail to make strong connections between the impulses that made her a charismatic star and those that fueled her mental and physical disintegration, giving us a moony, doomed figure as unreal as the successful caricature Miranda created.

Director Phil Luna doesn't help matters with a static production that fails to make hay out of what content there is. In addition, the performers step on each other's lines, or stop entirely, coaxing the imperfectly committed dialogue out of themselves in a halting manner. Laura Chavez is a ringer for the large-eyed, expressive Miranda, and gives her portrayal warmth and dignity. Rosita Ruvalcava does as creditable job as Carmen's overshadowed but faithful sister. Todd Simmonds is unconvincing as the husband.

Carbajal has the most fun in the evening as the catty, flamboyant Teddy - watchable both in and out of drag. But even in his work crop up signs of the production's laxity. Teddy intersperses his dialogue with witty rejoinders that incorporate snatches of popular songs of the time - and not once does he get the tune right.

Neither does "Miranda."

"The Beatification of Carmen Miranda" is presented by El Centro Su Teatro, 4725 High St., through May 11. Shows are Thursdays through Saturdays at 8:05 p.m. Tickets are $12 each; $9 each for students and seniors. For tickets and information, please call 303-296-0219 or visit www.suteatro.org.