Brazil's Dona Flor is back in Spanish on NY stage

By Vivianne Rodrigues

NEW YORK (Reuters) - When one of New York's premier Spanish language theaters needed to celebrate its 40th anniversary, the company turned to a Brazilian classic.

The Spanish Repertory Theatre took the 1966 Jorge Amado novel "Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos" (Dona Flor and her Two Husbands), adapted it to Spanish from the original Portuguese, added a Latin American TV and film star, and found a hit.

Now titled "Dona Flor y Sus Dos Maridos" in the adaptation by Veronica Triana and director Jorge Ali Triana, the play premiered in late March and was originally scheduled to run through June but was extended through the end of September due to high demand.

It is performed in Spanish with simultaneous translation in English via headsets.

"When we started working with Dona Flor, many told us of the difficulty of trying to bring to the stage a story that had folk undertones, seemed so local and so specific of a province in Brazil," said Ali Triana, who is also Colombia's National Theater director.

"But the incredible response by the public tells just the opposite: Flor's dilemma is very universal and almost every one can relate to it."

Flor is a young widow who owns a cooking school in the province of Bahia, Brazil's true melting pot. She remarries Teodoro, a respectable pharmacist, only to have her roguish and con artist of a first husband come back from the dead to share the same house.

A comedy of errors ensues plus, as Amado put it, a fierce battle between love and lust, spirit and matter.  Continued...