Sandra
Theaterworks
Hartford
Through June 27, 2024
The following review contains spoilers.
I went to see Sandra at Theaterworks on a Friday evening. The theater was packed, and we all waited with baited breath as the star of the one-woman thriller, Felicia Curry, sat onstage, patiently waiting for the show to begin. And once the announcements were over, she launched right into her performance.
If you haven’t seen Sandra, written by David Cole, then here’s your review: Felicia Curry transforms a one-woman play into a swirling storm of characters, motivations and emotions. I recommend going in knowing as little as possible so that you can enjoy every up and down of the ride the show provides. The play’s official synopsis: “Sandra’s closest friend has mysteriously disappeared on a trip to Mexico. On a desperate search to find him, Sandra is propelled into a psychologically thrilling adventure filled with mysterious strangers and a highly-charged love affair.”
And now, for those of us who have already seen the play: I knew that Luca was a killer the moment they met.
That isn’t a bad thing, and I’ll tell you why. In murder mysteries and other kinds of thrillers, there are two tracks the audience can take. The first is the meta track, where the audience is aware it’s consuming a mystery so it’s listening for clues and sifting for the meaning behind the words for hints at whodunit.
Then there’s the track where we get lost with the character, embodying their experience fully and experiencing the story through their eyes and deductions. That second track works best for enjoying Sandra, because the real pull of the play is how Curry not only gives life to the title character, but to everyone she interacts with. When the smooth-talking Italian shows up early in the play, I thought, “Okay, that’s the guy.” The obviousness allowed me to turn off my logical brain and sit in Sandra’s experience.
On a stage that consists of only a chair, a reminder of the failing marriage in the backdrop of the events, Curry makes the stage feel like the entire world. Part of that is due to some digital magic in the production, where a variety of locales were projected onto the stage along with the associated sounds of those places. We went from the hiss of an espresso machine in a cafe in New York to the calm lapping of waves of the beach in Puerto Vallarta. The design work of Camilla Tassi, Marcelo Martinez Garcia and Evdoxia Ragkou is something to behold.
But the digital magic doesn’t work without someone to sell it. Curry makes us feel like we’re on the beach, drunkenly in love with a stranger we met the night before. She conveys the terror of being high and alone in a city we’ve never been to after she escapes Luca. As her control over her own fate slips away, Curry’s panic becomes palpable, particularly in one scene lit by lurid red light and made disturbing by Luca’s drunk, murderous demand for sex.
Curry performs not only Sandra, but also her unappreciative husband Richard; the lecherous Italian Luca; the hard-nosed detective Steven, and a few other characters who pop in and out of the mystery. Each character has a different accent, different mannerisms, and come across as fully realized characters in just a few lines of dialogue.
I can’t say enough about Curry and her performance. It was funny and exciting and even sexy when need be. Go see Sandra, and turn your analytical brain off so that you’re giving all of your attention to Felicia Curry giving one of the great performances you’ll see in theater.
NEXT
Sandra continues at Theaterworks through June 27.
Jamil goes to Bushnell Park for the Symphony in the Park.
