HORTENSIA AND THE MUSEUM OF DREAMS. To 18 June.

London

HORTENSIA AND THE MUSEUM OF DREAMS
by Nilo Cruz

Finborough Theatre To 18 June 2005
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Sun 3.30pm
Runs 2hr 15min One interval

TICKETS: 0870 4000 838
www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 5 June

Havana miraculous time back home in Cuba.This play gives a distinct sense Nilo Cruz isn't fond of Castro's communist Cuban regime. Or he's remarkably successful in working his way into the minds of characters unsympathetic to it, while the one brief representative of the state is peremptorily brisk in his dealings with people.

There again, the sister and brother making their separate returns to the island in 1998 left as part of Pedro Pan, a 1961 convoy evacuating 14,000 children of those wealthy enough to pay, and to fear for the future after Castro came to power. Luca's experience is commonplace enough, meeting a friend and finding a young lover. But Luciana stumbles upon Hortensia with her gimcrack collection of oddities, all linked, for her, to miracles. Though they've all the miraculous reality of a medieval Pardoner's junk-filled saddlepack, Hortensia believes journalist Luciana has come to help her open them as a museum to the public.

She has enough sense of political reality to veil their miraculous connections under the name Museum of Dreams, but is so enthusiastic in her belief that Luciana cannot explain she has come with no such purpose, and indeed had no knowledge of Hortensia's collection at all.

Though Cruz's idea doesn't quite survive the test of being set out in a series of scenes there's no inevitability in the way the story develops it nearly does so thanks to Cherub Theatre Company's cast, which is a sign of the kind of actor the Finborough, in its small Earl's Court pub home, can attract these days. Irini Venieri and Marcello Walton both give a good sense of the exile, returning to a land they knew long ago and to the sense of childhood associated with it; it's not a matter of overt behaviour, rather a puzzlement, a sense of being led, of the usual responses not being quite in order.

Tim Hardy's rich-voiced characterisation offers a sense of stability, contrasting Linda Bassett's Hortensia, lost in her world of mystery and wonders. No-one does stressed hopefulness better and Bassett is a magnetically sympathetic presence in Michael Gieleta's capable production.

Luciana: Irini Venieri
Luca: Marcello Walton
Tio Lalo/General Viamonte: Tim Hardy
Delita/Hotel Receptionist: Lucy Barker
Samuel: Alex Waldmann
Basilio: Simon Harrison
Hortensia: Linda Bassett

Director: Michael Gieleta
Designer: Alex Marker
Lighting: Guy Kometzky
Sound: Matt Downing
Music: Russell Hepplewhite
Associate director: Pia Furtado

2005-06-14 23:34:45