Life In Exile

Many people leave home due to extenuating circumstances. Some fled the pogroms in Tsarist Russia; others fled from oppressive regimes in Syria and Cambodia. Some left Ireland due to famine; others fled the violent drug cartels plaguing Mexico. Some left home only to return years later as a prodigal son; others were banished from their families by hyper-religious parents who could not embrace an LGBT child.


In her recent essay in The New Yorker entitled "What The Provincetown AIDS Memorial Leaves Out," Masha Gessen writes:

"All memorials smooth over history, leaving out much of the passion, the tragedy, and, most of all, the stories of the victims. (The 250-foot Pilgrim Monument that towers over Provincetown, indeed almost directly over the new AIDS memorial, is a study in omissions.) The AIDS monument, too, is remarkable for what it omits. The phrase 'open community' subsumes the word 'gay' and also elides why people with AIDS came to Provincetown seeking help. They came because they had no place to go. They came because their own parents wouldn’t touch them. Neither would their doctors and nurses, who put on gloves and, sometimes, hazmat suits before entering the room of an AIDS patient."

Masha Gessen (Photo by: Yaya Stempler)

"Provincetown, which in the 1980s had a year-round population of about 3,000, had no treatment to offer, of course. But it had low rents in the off-season, many queer landlords who weren’t afraid to rent to the sick, an AIDS support group, a gay magazine full of treatment information (I was the editor), and a lesbian town nurse named Alice Foley. She had moved to Provincetown from Boston to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a taxi driver, but around the time the men started getting sick, she returned to medicine. She still drove, though -- she would drive sick men two and a half hours to one of the Boston hospitals when necessary."

Living in exile comes with a tremendous amount of emotional baggage. Those who have found the freedom they were denied in their homeland work extra hard to assimilate into their new world. Others, who can never escape the wounds of the past, may choose to spend their lives looking back in anger.

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Central Works is currently presenting its 60th world premiere, a new play by Cristina Garcia based on her 2013 novel, King of Cuba. As the play begins, the audience meets Goyo Herrera (Steve Ortiz), an 87-year-old Cuban emigré living in Miami who desperately wants to live long enough to dance on the grave of El Commandante (Marga Gomez). Goyo has numerous reasons to be bitter -- not the least of which is El Commandante's role in causing Goyo's former girlfriend to hang herself. While it might be easy to dismiss Goyo as a delusional old coot, it's good for octogenarians to have goals.

To prepare for his grand act of revenge, Goyo attempts to keep in shape by doing arm exercises while holding a can of beans in each hand, and trying to build up his strength by performing reps lifting a sack of rice. His devoted daughter, Alina (Elaina Garrity), is a freelance photojournalist who would like to help Goyo visit his Cuban birthplace one last time before he dies. Goyo's son, Goyito (Marco Aponte), is a dimwit who has been serving a jail term after being busted on drug charges. Goyito's fantasy is to accompany his father to Havana where he might be able to get a new set of teeth thanks to Cuba's socialized medicine.

Although Alina has no idea about her father's plot to assassinate the infamous leader of the Cuban revolution, she has her own reason to help her father's dream come true: Alina hopes to get the 90-year-old El Commandante to pose for a nude portrait.

Marga Gomez appears as El Comandante in
King of Cuba (Photo by: Jim Norrena)

As El Commandante (a character inspired by Fidel Castro) prepares to celebrate his 90th birthday, his loyal followers are busily trying to please him and keep him distracted. Though their hero is acutely aware that his time on earth is limited, he believes that his machismo and virility can carry him along for a few more years. The big question is whether El Commandante will succumb to the ravages of time or to Goyo's thirst for revenge. In her program note, Garcia writes:

"In the early 1960s, half my family left the island and its new revolution; the other half remained by choice. My maternal grandmother was a vocal supporter of El Commandante while her own daughter (my mother) was an equally passionate opponent. It is this deep rift that has dominated the Cuban cultural-political landscape for six decades. The tale of Cuba and its peoples (both on the island and diasporically) is a cautionary tale of ideologues of every political persuasion. My challenge was to take on a serious subject and portray it with as much humor, passion, truth(s), and deep empathy for the millions whose lives were dramatically affected by this particular historical fallout -- and who, somehow miraculously, keep going on."

Marga Gomez (El Comandante) and Steve Ortiz (Goyo)
in a scene from King of Cuba (Photo by: Jim Norrena)

"The idea for King of Cuba (both the novel and its theatrical adaptation) emerged from years of thinking and writing about Cuba. I felt a tremendous urgency to bring this story to the stage, especially in these times of extreme, oppositional politics. King of Cuba is my attempt to wrestle (in a darkly comic, satirical fashion) with the intransigencies on both sides of this political divide. On the island, the aging dictator is obsessed with his legacy and outliving enemies like Goyo Herrera, an octogenarian Miami exile hellbent on destroying him. These old Cubanos are on a collision course revealing the false dichotomy between the two: their foibles, their vanities, and their inability to make peace."

I wish I could be more positive about King of Cuba but, alas, Garcia's play struck me as a textbook lesson in why not every novel should be adapted for the stage. Despite Goyo's and El Commandante's shared history of the Bay of Pigs invasion, only one scene really stands out: the wry and bittersweet moment when the two geezers accidentally find themselves standing at adjoining urinals. Despite any delusions about their strength, problems with benign prostatic hyperplasia leave both men struggling to pass any urine.

Ben Ortega portrays Angel in King of Cuba (Photo by: Jim Norrena)

Ben Ortega appears in numerous roles as Angel, a street hustler, crab catcher, director, prisoner, poet, and radio voice as well as El Commandante's old friend, Babo. In addition to appearing as Goyo's daughter, Elaina Garrity portrays a street vendor, dentist, artist, and the ghost of Goyo's dead wife. While Marco Aponte scores laughs as both Fernando and Goyito, Leticia Duarte juggles nearly 10 roles (including a street vendor, crab catcher, airline attendant, Russian tourist, museum guard, tour guide, and waitress).

While plays like The 39 Steps (which is based on a madcap chase as four actors race around Great Britain) can sustain the dramatic momentum and quick costume changes that enable lots of characters to come and go with lightning dexterity, King of Cuba is a complex tale which can't seem to get out of its own way. Too much of the story's humor and pathos gets lost amid the narrative clutter as a large number of characters keep the play's small cast on the run in a tiny room with a steadily diminishing return on investment.

With costume design by Tammy Berlin, lighting and stage direction by Gary Graves, sound by Gregory Scharpen (who included a subtle tribute to a piece of shtick Mel Brooks devised for Frau Blucher and her whinnying horses in Young Frankenstein), and percussion by bongocero Carlos Cao, King of Cuba has been directed by Gary Graves. Performances continue through August 19 at the Berkeley City Club (click here for tickets).

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A new documentary entitled The Prince and the Dybbuk (screened during the recent San Francisco Jewish Film Festival) tells the story of Moshe Waks, the son of a poor Polish blacksmith from Ukraine, who converted to Catholicism, was likely declared dead by his orthodox Jewish family, became a key figure in Italian cinema and, at the time of his death, was known to his wealthy and famous friends as Prince Michał Waszyński.

A picture of the Ziv family

For some, the mystery behind this man's obscure past and successful self-invention makes them question whether he was a cunning fraud or a man who could no longer distinguish between the illusion of film and reality. For others, especially those living in a city like San Francisco (where many rejected souls have come to make one desperate final attempt at starting life anew), the answer is painfully obvious. About 20 minutes before the documentary's big reveal, warning bells started going off in my mind: Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Not only was their message crystal clear, it also renewed my faith in Gaydar.

Michał Waszyński is the subject of The Prince and the Dybbuk

Waszyński was a closet case who probably left home because he knew there was no future for him among orthodox Jews. In her director's statement, Elwira Niewiera writes:

"Who among us hasn’t wanted to be someone else once in their lifetime? Rarely is anyone as successful in such masterly role-changing as Michał Waszyński. lt is exactly this phenomenal talent that has attracted our attention and interest. Our protagonist was an extraordinary personality and defied all efforts of others to pigeonhole him. He was a Jew in Kovel, a Pole in Warsaw, and finally a Prince in the elite circles of post-war Europe. At first glance, his case was a brilliant one, rather than tragic. Yet what price did Waszyński pay for his incredible masquerades? Is it possible for somebody to completely cut themselves off from their roots without suffering any consequences of this act?"

Waszyński on the set for 1964's The Fall of the Roman Empire

"The times in which Waszynski lived did not allow him to be himself. So when reality becomes unbearable, one begins to live inside one’s own imagination. With the help of cinema, he was perfectly successful in pulling off this trick. He rejected his original self and became a unique filmmaker who not only created monumental films, but also made his own life a masterpiece."

Waszyński looks at his picture on the cover of Time magazine

Born in 1904 in Kovel (which was then considered a part of the Imperial Russian Empire), Waszyński first moved to Warsaw and then to Berlin as Germany gained power during World War I. After working as an assistant director to F. W. Murnau, he ended up directing 37 films made in Poland during the 1930s, including a Yiddish film entitled The Dybbuk.


After fleeing from Warsaw to Bialystok, Waszyński embarked on a new career as a theatre director. After Bialystok was taken over by the Soviet army, he began directing theatre in Moscow. His service in the Polish army took him to Persia, Egypt, and Italy (where he filmed the Battle of Monte Cassino).

Waszyński spending time with Orson Welles 
(Copyrights: The Massimiliano and Oberdan Troiani Archive)

After World War II, Waszyński concentrated his filmmaking activities in Italy and Spain, beginning as an assistant production manager on 1954's The Barefoot Contessa. He subsequently served as associate producer for The Quiet American (1958), El Cid (1961), 55 Days at Peking (1963), and 1964's Circus World as well as The Fall of the Roman Empire.


The Prince and the Dybbuk includes footage of Waszyński interacting with such cinema legends as Anna Magnani, Sophia Loren, James Mason, Audrey Hepburn, Orson Welles, and Ava Gardner. Although some of his closest friends regarded him as "a born aristocrat" who was a fixture within top levels of film society, he was also an extremely lonely man who once wrote that "It does me good not to know who I am."

The Prince and the Dybbuk offers a fascinating look at a man who decided to rise above his circumstances and create a life for himself that his family could not possibly have imagined. While LGBT viewers won't be the least bit surprised by some of the twists and turns in Waszyński's path to fame, Niewiera's documentary makes it crystal clear why some people can never go home again. Here's the trailer: