MORENO MASTERS ROLE —by Robert Hurwitt / May 28, 2004 Rita Moreno is giving a master class in the finer points of holding and sharing a stage at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Moisés Kaufman applies the inventive creativity with which he devised Gross Indecency and The Laramie Project to open up and theatricalize the script. Between them, the Master Class that opened Wednesday at the Rep’s Roda Theatre often lives up to its name to a degree I’ve never seen before. A tabloid-light portrait of Maria Callas framed within the master classes the great soprano taught at Juilliard in 1971 and ‘72, Terrence McNally’s ‘96 Tony award winner is essentially a diva vehicle with some lovely operatic trimmings. Originally written for Zoë Caldwell, who played Callas on Broadway, it comes off as something of a “Diva Dearest” in the touring production headed by Faye Dunaway that came to the Golden Gate Theatre in ‘97. Moreno, however, is a diva of a different sort. She’s earned the title, as one of the select few women to have won the top four performing arts awards—Oscar, Tony (for McNally’s The Ritz), Grammy and Emmy (along with Helen Hays and Audrey Hepburn, with Barbra Streisand and Liza Minnelli squeaking onto the list with special honorary awards). In June, she’ll have to interrupt her performance schedule to fly east to accept the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And she’s an artist of exceptional sensitivity who can find the quietly dramatic pulse of an overwritten passage and wring the heart with a suppressed sob. • • • The aerial opera and Moreno’s light touch work beautifully to defuse some of the obvious—even catty—connections McNally is making between Bellini’s heroine, watching her beloved marry another woman, and Callas’ affair with Aristotle Onassis (he drags in Medea, too, to underline the point). Moreno infuses her reminiscence of a passionate Callas and crassly bullying Onassis with a wistful immediacy that cuts and leavens the still-sharp anger. She’s still more remarkable in her scenes with the students, not only hitting her sharp, cutting punch lines with unerring skill but listening with a concentration that enhances and edifies every sung note. In McNally’s best passages, Moreno talking through an aria from La Sonnambula, Puccini’s Tosca or Verdi’s Macbeth is an operatic experience in itself. BACK TO TOP