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The dark-haired woman in the painting is wearing a diaphanous blue robe, wafting across an Ipanema beach.
At various points in the show, she is clearly Iemanja, the Afro-Brazilian goddess of the ocean.
Is he making fun?
Is he paying homage?
Bete is a firecracker, a pistol, a bazooka, a volcano.
She seems to want to possess them forever, to make them part of her body.
This one is the apple of her eye, that one is her right hand.
Arturo, she says, is my heart.
Certainly her Brazilian mother felt it keenly that Bete had light skin while she was dark.
This first pandemic-era in-person show at the Rattlestick gleams with polish.
But dont things pushed into the ocean … return?
Once you start, how can you ever come to the end of describing your mother?
It would be like coming to the end of the tide.
Ni Mi Madreis at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater through September 25.
