Brutal Aspects Of Poverty Dramatized In ‘Mud’ By New Latiné Theater Lab

By Marvin Glassman

The brutality exposed by poverty and ignorance as experienced by three individuals is the focus of the 75-minute one act drama “Mud” by playwright Maria Irene Fornes. The play, running now through Saturday, June 14 at Empire Stage in Ft. Lauderdale, marked an impressive opening to Latine Theater Lab, the new South Florida regional theater company.

The play is not for the faint of heart, as the audience lives through the pessimism and hostile relationship between three individuals living in a rural farm, presumably in the United States in the early part of the 20th century, although the time and setting of the play is unknown.

Before a word of dialogue is spoken by the actors, the audience feels that something odd is about to happen as the play opens. Lloyd (actor Eric Gospodinoff) is walking aimlessly in a farm filled with hay and noises of pigs squealing and is restless as he is experiencing pain.

As an interchange between Lloyd and Mae (actress Caila Katz) unfolds, the audience learns that Mae lives in the rural farm with Lloyd, but they are not married or brother and sister. Rather, Mae accepted Lloyd as an apparent live-in boarder who was thrust upon Mae by her late father several years earlier.

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