Living in Peru : your everyday companion

By Murray Lytle

In reading the promotional literature for this play I was convinced it was going to be pretty lame.  Having seen it, I am a converted devotee.  I am always amazed at the depth and breadth of the human imagination.  Kurt Cobain is known to me only by his death and Frank Sinatra by his life.  But Sergio Zurita’s imaginative interplay of these two personalities has made them both understandable to me through the connection they had with their daughters.

If the first minutes of the play moved slowly (with a grubby Joaquín de Orbegoso as Kurt Cobain, crawling about the floor playing loud music and then entertaining us with even louder guitar music), then my impatience was remedied with the entrance of Fernando de Soria looking and sounding, for all the world, like Frank Sinatra.  And the play moved skyward from there.

The play takes place in the hours prior to Cobain’s suicide on April 5, 1994.  Joaquín de Orbegoso does a very good job of demonstrating the tension and manic-depressive mood swings that likely accompany such an event.  Bringing Frank Sinatra into the play as Cobain’s spiritual guide (even though he does not die for another 4 years) is a stroke of non-intuitive genius and the playwright Zurita makes good comedic use of the irrationality of such an event.  In fact, the play is spiced with a lot of funny and ironic dialogue that make it both humorous and poignant.

It is Sinatra’s role to persuade Cobain that suicide is not the right way to manage his problems and the play is an interesting foray into the psychology of pop icons who suffer from disruptive childhoods.  It could get maudlin but it doesn’t.  In fact, by focusing the discussion on what they have in common – daughters - the viewer is drawn into the discussion and allowed to empathize with both perspectives.

Rather than offer my “tiny tot” understanding of psychology, the reader is strongly encouraged to take in the play at the San Isidro Municipal Library and come to your own conclusions.  The acting is controlled and professional, the stage is sparse and non-distracting resulting in an entertainment reward valued at many times the price of admission.



No Te Preocupes, Ojos Azules

Directed by Alberto Isola

From June 14 to August 4  
Teatro Auditorio de la Municipalidad de San Isidro. Calle La República 455, El Olivar
Playing from Thursday to Sunday at 8:00 pm
Cost: S/.25 general and S/.15 students and seniors