By Marie Gonzalez
If you had ever wondered how me n deal with heartaches, moments of truth and love, “Love letters to women” takes the audience through a rift of all of these experiences about women through the eyes of men.
The production was written by Ryan T. Husk and directed by Hector Rodriguez.
The opening scene starts off with five men reciting adjectives describing women.
“Women are inspirational, women are powerful, women are cheaters,” said the men.
Each of the stories were told in the form of a monologue and were inter-weaved by Michael, the guide in the story.
Michael, played by Mario Martinez, is a man that grew up with five older sisters.
He describes how growing up with women made him be more in touch with his feminine side.
With wittiness and a playful tone, he reminisces on how in school he accidentally said “I spilled soda on my top,” instead of saying t-shirt, surprising the boys at the playground.
He also described how he spent a long time getting his hair perfect, one time using his sister’s hair spray.
Michael pleads his case to the audience by saying that he could not leave a can of hair spray alone.
As the play develops, it acquires a more intimate tone and the men start sharing more serious stories.
By the third and fourth monologue, the play has taken the form of a therapy session.
Kevin Vavasseur plays a man who grew up watching his mother cheat on his father, and shares how he dates several women and cheated on all of them.
He delivers this performance with a powerful compelling tone of voice that drags in the audience.
Here he conveys how not only men cheat, but even his mother had cheated and this was one of the factors why he grew up to cheat on every women he dated.
The setting was simple but the actors’ individual monologues set the ambiance and filled the stage evoking many laughs and emotions from the audience.
Later we see how one woman plays a different role to two men, one who she is an aunt who has been like a mother, and to another man the daring and sexy woman that he has been looking for all his life.
In a witty and at times raunchy dialogue, they present the woman. One man starts a line describing her in a motherly way, and the other stating how she had become the women of his dreams.
The play wraps up with a message that captures the essence of the play, by saying that “women are love,” and that in a man’s life there is always a women at the center of it.
For information on “Love letters to women,” call (323) 263-7684.
The play will run through March 6 at the theatre CASA 0101 located in Boyle Heights.