I LOVED Bernarda Alba. I thought it was amazing - the acting is just SO strong..and it's LaChiusa of course so you can't come away humming anything really, but I don't mind that. Phylicia Rashad is one of my all time favorite actresses so of course I enjoyed her performance - the acting was just WHOA...the singing, not so great, but it went so well with the character. I was surprised the most by Daphne Rubin-Vega - I guess I had just never thought of her as an actress before - I think she gave one of the overall strongest performances.
Elphie-- I looked around for a few minutes (and you just got offline, bad timing!), but could this be it?
"When we did the first reading in this space I couldn’t stop crying,” says Esparza. “It gives you chills. There are so many things the audience will pick up that the characters don’t realize. It is heavy with dramatic irony right now, every time you mention gay marriage. He keeps saying, ‘Why didn’t you fight for this?’ ” -http://raulesparza.com/press/2004-0525advocate.html
His hair does look lighter there, but I agree that it's the lighting.
Okay, so here's a random thing that's been confusing me for a while... when BWW talks about people in articles, their names are almost always links to their photos pages. Why isn't Raul's? He has photos on BWW.
Sorry that wasn't what you were looking for, Elphie... good luck finding it!
Anyway, I think I'll now buy into the fact that Raul is possibly the most brilliant stage actor working today, or at least among the top few. Not that I doubted it before, but... yeah, now I totally agree.
My mother has just so kindly informed me that she doesn't really LIKE Raul anymore. "I used to, but yeah... I don't like him anymore." She thinks he's strange. She's not into strange people.
So apparently my mother still SORT OF likes him. Geez! She says that from everything she read and heard, she really liked him, but then she saw Chitty and thought he made an idiot out of himself, even though she admits he looked like he was having a ball. hm.
I told her I think this trip will restore her faith.