THE STORIES: ¡CUBA SI! Waiting for the revolution that she feels certain is near at hand, Cuba, a supporter of Fidel Castro, has set up camp in New York’s Central Park. Having become something of a tourist attraction, she is interviewed by a reporter from the New York Times—who shudders apprehensively as Cuba shoots down the series of “spies” who approach her bastion, and harangues a watching crowd through a bullhorn. Inevitably the interview becomes a confrontation between her left-wing views and his right-wing reactions, with the end result an uneasy standoff. As he leaves the reporter remarks that she has given him no real story to file, as a story must have a beginning, a middle and an end. “But I have indeed given you a beginning,” replies Cuba, “and I may yet give you a middle—and perhaps,” she adds ominously, “an end as well.” (1 man, 3 women.)
BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME. While brother and sister bicker meanly about pot-smoking and illicit pregnancies at their high school, father makes leering phone calls to strangers, and mother blots it all out with a portable hair dryer. Then the coffin with the body of their eldest son, Jimmy, who died in Vietnam, is delivered—followed by a television crew to film a human interest feature on the family’s grief. Reacting on cue they make much of their loss and the noble sacrifice this embodies but with a glib superficiality that is both saddening and shocking. Their attention soon shifts to more immediate concerns, however, and Jimmy rises up in his coffin to address the audience. He knows now that the reason he wishes he were still alive is so he can figure out why he is dead—and so perhaps should we all. (3 men, 3 women, plus 4 nonspeaking roles for men.)
LAST GASPS. First presented on New York’s channel 13 (Educational Television) as part of FOUL!, a special program on pollution and conservation, this imaginative short play offers an affecting, but also chilling, observation on the awful fate that mankind will face unless he curbs the misuse of his environment. Moving quickly from one vignette to another, the play presents a cross section of individuals, all quite different and yet all facing the same inexorable horror—that terrible moment when breathable air is exhausted and human life no longer possible. (6 men, 6 women.)
