ART, DESIRE, AND SURVEILLANCE
IN CASTRO’S CUBA

Scheherazade spins a tale of longing
in this richly acted production

Andrea San Miguel, Neysha Mendoza Castro

In the middle of the night, two sisters are violently yanked from their beds by armed militia. Pulled into their living room, their assailants scream at them, demanding the location of banned print materials. When their search is unfruitful, they turn to humiliating the two women, forcing one of them to play the piano to entertain them.

Andrea San Miguel, Neysha Mendoza Castro

This frightening and tense scene opens Pulitzer-winner Nilo Cruz’s play, Two Sisters and A Piano, now on stage at the Writers’ Theatre in Glencoe, Illinois, in an intensely atmospheric production. In Havana, in 1991, a famous writer, Maria Celia (Andrea San Miguel), and her much younger sister Sofia (Neysha Mendoza-Castro), a pianist, are released after two years of imprisonment and promptly placed under house arrest. The crime: an essay written by Maria Celia asking for a loosening of restrictions on the Cuban people.

Adam Poss, Neysha Mendoza Castro, Andrea San Miguel

Trapped in their mansion, the two sisters—especially Sofia—are increasingly subject to cabin fever. Brian Sidney Bembridge’s simple but elegant set features a stunning seascape as backdrop, a wide-open expanse in sharp counterpoint to the sisters’ increasingly claustrophobic existence. Maria Celia writes letters to her husband, who has escaped to Europe and is trying to get her out—it’s the attention from the international press that gets the sisters out of prison—but she’s never received a letter in response. In fact, they’ve received no mail at all.

Neysha Mendoza Castro, Arash Fakhrabadi

Into this household comes Portuondo (Adam Poss), a lieutenant who is a fan of Maria Celia’s writing but also deeply suspicious of her correspondence with her husband. It turns out that there are scores of letters—all confiscated. Portuondo, who is immediately smitten with the fiery Maria Celia, strikes a deal with her: every day he will read her a letter from her husband. In return, she will narrate a chapter of a story that she is writing.

Andrea San Miguel, Neysha Mendoza Castro, Arash Fakhrabadi

Two Sisters is beautifully directed by Lisa Portes and benefits immensely from its talented cast. Andrea San Miguel and Neysha Mendoza-Castro are wonderful as siblings, and the loveliest scene in the play involves the two of them dancing together. Adam Poss—in a bit of a stock character—as the lieutenant is suitably charming and passionate, and his chemistry with San Miguel is off the charts. Good thing, too, because it allows us to elide the moral queasiness of the entire romance—does Maria Celia even have the option to say no to him?—at least until Sofia blows the entire thing up.

Neysha Mendoza Castro, Andrea San Miguel, Adam Poss

Sofia is the most fascinating character in the play. Unlike Maria Celia, her life has yet to be lived, and she is overwhelmed by desire—for adventure, for travel, for companionship, for sex—funneling all of her energy into increasingly fantastical scenarios, mostly involving an unseen, virile neighbor. She is also the most perceptive character on stage, keenly observing from the sidelines. I’m not quite sure what to make of Mendoza-Castro’s performance, which oscillates between disarmingly open and frustratingly opaque. It is technically very good, but I left the play knowing as little of Sofia as when I entered. Perhaps that’s the point: that Sofia has been so addled by the imprisonment and house arrest that she has no idea what she is or what she wants, other than to escape.

Sofia is also provided with a love interest in the form of a piano tuner, played by Arash Fakhrabadi, who gives a sweet and guileless comic performance in what is a severely underwritten role.

Arash Fakhrabadi

Two Sisters and a Piano has a few things to say about creativity being an escape from the horrors of life; Maria Celia’s story-in-progress and Sofia’s piano playing are what mostly give the two women the fortitude to keep going. But it doesn’t really delve into the creative process too much, which is just as well because Maria Celia’s prose (as heard in her letters) is a bit, er… ripe, to put it kindly. What it works best as is a character study, giving us two fascinating, complex characters that make us want to lean in and learn more about them. They are much more interesting than the play as a whole, which can’t seem to decide exactly what it wants to be until the last fifteen minutes or so, when Cruz discards all artifice and romanticism and gives us a stunning final frame that is as moving and heartfelt as it is terrifying.

Neysha Mendoza Castro

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photos by Michael Brosilow

Two Sisters and a Piano
Writers Theatre
Nichols Theatre, 325 Tudor Court in Glencoe
2 hours 15 minutes with one intermission
Wed at 2 & 7:30; Thurs-Fri at 7:30; Sat at 2 & 7:30; Sun at 2 and 6
ends on March 29, 2026
for tickets ($35-$95), call 847.242.6000 or visit Writers Theatre

for more shows, visit Theatre in Chicago

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