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    ‘O.K.!’ Review: When the Abortion Clinic Cancels

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    In Christin Eve Cato’s new backstage dramedy, an actress’s plan to terminate a pregnancy collides with the rollback of reproductive rights.In a shared dressing room of a theater somewhere in Oklahoma, an actress named Melinda is the first to arrive. It’s 90 minutes before the curtain rises, and to the keen-eyed stage manager, Alex, she seems not quite herself.“You look like you’ve been throwing up,” Alex says, getting it right in one guess, not that Melinda is about to admit that she is pregnant. She has an abortion scheduled, and no one needs to know.But in Christin Eve Cato’s new backstage dramedy, “O.K.!,” Melinda’s timing is on a collision course with the rollback of reproductive rights. The date is June 24, 2022, and the U.S. Supreme Court has just overturned Roe v. Wade. Soon the clinic calls to cancel Melinda’s appointment permanently, and the clear vision she had of her future clouds over with panic.“O.K.!” is about how Melinda (Danaya Esperanza) moves through that fear as the clock ticks down to showtime, with the help of her fellow actors Jolie (Yadira Correa) and Elena (Claudia Ramos Jordán) and their collective reverence for tarot-card wisdom. Also instrumental: the calming competency of Alex (a very funny Cristina Pitter), who herds unruly cast members like cats.The barely glimpsed show within a show is a nonunion tour of a musical called “Okla-Hola,” a parody of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s cowboy-Americana classic “Oklahoma!,” told from a Latino point of view. Melinda stars as Lori (a version of Laurey, of course, the farmhouse beauty pursued by two suitors), with the jaded, politically engaged Jolie as Titi Elder (a variation on Laurey’s Aunt Eller) and the high-spirited, Spanglish-speaking Elena as Ada Ana (the inveterate flirt Ado Annie). In a corner of their dressing room stands a scaled-down, rustic farm windmill, which will transform into the tarot deck’s glowing, 3D Wheel of Fortune. (The set is by Rodrigo Escalante.)Directed by Melissa Crespo for Intar Theater and Radio Drama Network, “O.K.!” blends a loving critique of the theater with a historically minded explication of threats to women’s health and autonomy, leavens it all with comedy and sprinkles it with the surreal. Tonally, that is quite a mix to pull off, particularly with the script’s didacticism working against its drama.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Review: ‘The Hours Are Feminine,’ a Family Braces for a Storm

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      In José Rivera’s latest play, a Puerto Rican family moves to Long Island in 1960, contending both with Hurricane Donna and their neighbors’ hostility.When it is revealed, the meaning of “The Hours are Feminine,” the title of José Rivera’s latest play, is an apt encapsulation of the work. A newly immigrated Puerto Rican mother is explaining the Spanish language’s gendered grammar to her neighbor within a larger conversation about how bored they are as housewives on Long Island: “Time is masculine, but …”It’s a poetic phrase that is almost too perfect, bordering on trite. Yet it contains such insight that it evokes a nodding mm-hmm from the audience. Like this line, the whole play, in its premiere production at Intar Theater in Manhattan, strikes a delicate balance between truism and genuine feeling.Rivera writes and directs it as a remembrance of his family’s move to Long Island in the summer of 1960, which ended with the arrival of Hurricane Donna. His stand-in, 5-year-old Jaivin (Donovan Monzón-Sanders), and his mother, Evalisse (Maribel Martinez), arrive in Lake Ronkonkoma from their native island a year after his father, Fernán (Hiram Delgado), has settled into their new home.Fernán has secured for them a ratty, illegally rented shack in the backyard of a picturesque house owned by Charlie (Dan Grimaldi), an aging Italian American creep who taunts them with slurs he knows they don’t understand. (The three family members perform their Spanish dialogue in English, so that their language barrier is revealed, poignantly, as a ghost might realize he’s invisible).At the diner where Fernán works for $99 a month, he overhears patrons worrying about the Black and Puerto Rican families moving into their white idyll. That’s also the reason Charlie’s son, Anthony (Robert Montano), has moved himself and his wife, Mirella (Sara Koviak), into the big house, fleeing an integrating Brooklyn.Mirella, though, is worldlier than that, and eagerly strikes up a friendship with Evalisse. Their interactions, hinged on the commonalities of midcentury womanhood, form the play’s tender core, before the families’ increasing friction culminates with the storm’s climactic arrival.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More