Kitty and Lina
Wed–Sat, Apr 1–4, 8pm
Sun, Apr 5, 5pm
Teatro Santa Ana
Biblioteca Pública
Reloj 50A
100 pesos

Kitty and Lina deliver the goods
By Keith Wall

Kitty and Lina are two tough, feisty ladies; in the vernacular of an earlier age, we’d have called them tough cookies, pistols. They are characters in the best sense of the word, and they do entertain.

In Manuel Igrejas’s play, Kitty and Lina, we first meet “pretty” Kitty, a 20-something blond Texas debutante who believes she’s channeling Marilyn Monroe. She is infuriated when people stop her to tell her she reminds them of some blond starlet of the moment, but never Marilyn. She’s gone to New York and is serious about her acting career, even if Actor’s Studio didn’t accept her. She’s also serious about finding an intense, artistic, witty, Jewish boyfriend (but not so old as Woody Allen, and better looking). In the meantime she’s making do with a middle-aged married Italian who tells her she’s fat. In a very funny, intimate monologue, Kitty shares with the audience her views on fame, beauty, and men.

In the second act we meet Lina, a stylish, ascerbic 70. Lina smokes and swears and exemplifies brazen New York sophistication. She’s had many good men in her life and searches the audience for the much younger man she’ll choose to go home with. She tells of her 20-year affair with the CEO of the company where she became an executive, who thank God married a much younger woman when his wife died because let that young thing take care of him in his incontinent dotage. She never wanted to get married, although she knew love, but now she’d just enjoy some company. She finds it very depressing having once been a main attraction and now just another of the New York scene’s elderly females, invisible among the hoards of young people on the city streets. She admires Joan Rivers, because she may be old and feeble but she’s maintained her notoriety by virtue of outrageousness, makeup, and sheer will.

Kitty and Lina had its world premiere at the Manhattan Theater Source in April 2008. The New York Times reviewer wrote, “Grand sets and high-kicking chorus lines are nice, but a simple idea well executed is all you need for an engaging evening of theater. Kitty and Lina fills that bill nicely.”

The play, directed by Linda López McAlister, is being brought to San Miguel by the Camino Real Theatre of New Mexico, following a run at the National Hispanic Cultural Center’s Roy E. Disney Center for the Performing Arts. This Camino Real offering is preceded by two other successful productions the troupe has brought to San Miguel: Copenhagen in 2006 and Still Life in 2007. All plays have small casts, are character-driven, and feature sharp and engaging dialogue. 

“Pretty’ Kitty is played by talented newcomer Tawni Vee Waters. Lina is portrayed with wit and insight by veteran stage and screen actor Nancy Jeris, last seen here as Georgia O’Keeffe in Still Life. 

Kitty and Lina will play for five performances April 1–5. Proceeds benefit the AnYel School of Music in San Miguel.