Description

The Modern Ladies of Guanabacoa shows one family’s climb to wealth in the Cuba of 1928-31. The play is at once a political drama and social comedy, ranging from melodrama to farce. Questions of power, control and revolution within the family mirror society’s wider conflicts. The father is a butcher who rules his wife and four grown children with an iron hand, even as he spends most of his time philandering outside the house. The only daughter, aged 27, is accused of having lost her virginity simply because she may once have kissed the now-deceased man who courted her for seven years. While her three brothers live less-cloistered sex lives, they benefit from a double standard that allows young Cuban men to go whoring to satisfy their ”special needs.’ This play is a part of Machado’s Before and After the Revolution series, a group of four plays about the Cuban Revolution. Other plays in the series are: Once Removed,In the Eye of the Hurricane, and Havana is Waiting