‘THE CAPEMAN’
New York
Theater, 1998
‘The
Capeman’ begins with a little boy, barefoot and wearing an improbable bowler
hat, looking very serious and standing stock still at center stage, as if posing
for a picture. He is young Salvador Agron, and in his short, sad life he will
gain notoriety as "The Capeman," a 16 year-old Puerto Rican immigrant who gets
mixed up with a gang called The Vampires and unaccountably murders two innocent
teenage boys. Later he will grow into a wiser man of 36, finally paroled after a
lifetime in prison and ready to begin anew. He will die just a few years later
in the Bronx. What does such a life signify?
Paul Simon's
beautiful new musical ‘The Capeman’ asks this question with eloquence and
compassion, and if in the end it is unable to provide an answer, its journey
through the mind and soul of a man is powerful a
nd
affecting. In a series of impressionistic songs and scenes, moments of
Salvador's life are depicted, from his boyhood in Puerto Rico right up to his
death, propelled by the pulsing but muted rhythms of the Barrio and the streets
and the churches and the prisons, and distilled through the bitter and regretful
haze of memory and time. Events and remembrances flash past us like sepia-tinted
old photographs, occasionally evoking a smile, more often bringing us nearer to
tears. The cumulative effect is almost unrelievedly sad, yes, but somehow almost
exalting, too, as we struggle to understand how a young man can go so
irredeemably off course, and how--whether--such a man can ever hope for
redemption.
‘The Capeman’
is an intense work of theatre and an effective, though flawed, work of art. Its
tribulations are well-known; the miracle is that Simon and his collaborators,
who include (credited) director and choreographer Mark Morris and (uncredited)
director Jerry Zaks and choreographer Joey McKneely, have solved most of the
problems presented by such difficult, heartfelt material. There are some slow
s
pots, to be sure, and some things don't quite work or make sense; but why focus
on the show's liabilities when its assets offer
such riches? The design, by Bob Crowley (sets and costumes), Natasha Katz
(lighting), and Wendall K. Harrington (projections) is stunning, including a
couple of startlingly unusual, beautiful stage pictures in a church and in the
prison that will take your breath away. Crowley, in particular, evokes the
claustrophobia of the Barrio, experienced not just by the teenagers, by the way,
but by their elders as way; this is also highlighted pointedly by the show's
choreography which, although not as extensive as you might expect, is
nonetheless right on target. The company of forty actors, singers, and dancers
is excellent; the production's three stars are superlative. Marc Anthony is
charismatic and sexy, yet manages to convey the confused cockiness of
16-year-old Salvador. Ruben Blades, as the adult Salvador, shows the rage and
despair bubbling underneath a subdued, controlled surface; he too is marvelously
commanding. Ednita Nazario i
s superb as Salvador's mother, elevating what could
be a clichéd character into a tough, loving, completely sympathetic woman. Her
clear, melancholy singing gives voice to the sad
and unsolvable puzzle of the Capeman's life.
‘The Capeman’
is the work of many collaborators, but its chief creator is undeniably Paul
Simon and in his words and music we find the soul of this spare and serious
show. What Simon does best is to use the soundtrack of our subconscious to
express the inexpressible: in the center of ‘The Capeman’'s first act, he does
exactly this, in a series of six beautiful songs whose shifting rhythms and
lyric ideas articulate the almost infinite longing of a sixteen-year-old boy
trapped in a cold and hostile city. Near the end of the second act, Simon does
something similar, this time neatly juxtaposing the jubilation of a Puerto Rico
Day celebration with the utter aloneness of the adult Salvador, now
paroled and
ready to return home. Simon's score is stunning and entirely unlike anything
else you hear in the theatre. Some of the standouts are ‘Satin Summer Nights,’
‘Bernadette,’ ‘Dance to a Dream,’ and ‘Quality.’ Simon's trademark pseudo-poetic
lyrics are here, occasionally missing the mark (as has always been true of his
work) but sometimes exactly right, as in this description of an Irish kid who
has insulted Sal's friends: "He looks like a ton of corned beef/Floating in
beer." Or consider this stanza from ‘Born in Puerto Rico,’ which opens the
show: the adult Salvador watches as his younger self plays with some of his
friends from the Vampires gang:
“No one
knows you like I do/ Nobody can know your heart the way I do/
No one can
testify to all that you've been through/ But this will
It does. It
seems to me that there are some in the media who have been gunning for this
show, hoping for it to fail. That kind of thinking is inexplicable to me; it's
unforgivable when it's applied to something that not only aspires to but often
achieves true theatrical grace. ‘The Capeman’ is far from perfect, but it
breathes and sings from the hearts and souls of the men and women who created it
and the man who inspired it.