| Be Careful! The Sharks Will Eat You! |
| Written by Liz Belilovskaya | |||
| Wednesday, 29 June 2011 01:49 | |||
 Be Careful! The Sharks Will Eat You! Written and Starring: Jay Alvarez Directed by: Theresa Gambacorta Playing at: Stage Left Studio at 214 West 30th, 6th FL, NY, NY. Be Careful! The Sharks Will Eat You! is a wonderful, emotionally appealing, one man show starring and written by Jay Alvarez, directed by Theresa Gambacorta. Alvarez delivered a thoroughly amazing performance in every possible way. He accomplishes this by skipping on elaborate sets, glamorous props and extravagant costumes, he does it through great and intimate story telling as if dabbling in oral tradition with an appropriately placed theatrical flare. His expressive nature and love of the subject makes the performance touching and truly enjoyable. His is a story of one mans bravery, national political instability and the grave risks one man took to give his family a better life. It is his fathers story, but first some context. The glamour filled, criminally fantastic Tropicana nights of the 1950's were a thing of legend but also unmentionable corruption and danger. Overthrowing the Cuban Constitution General Batista along with his army took over in the 1950's by force. Promising the people democracy and stability he manipulate them into accepting his authority. What Cuba actually received was a criminal safe- house of epic proportions. The country was run by gangsters living out Hollywood like lifestyles as the country dealt with a unstable economy and violence, In 1959 the Cuban people were shocked to learn that Batista and his gang secretly escaped Cuba with a hefty sum of $300 million dollars. Fidel Castro took over as leader of Cuba. He made claims similar to Batista that a democratic government was going to be established but a Communist regime was set up instead. People turned to spying on one another, executions without trial became frequent and parents were terrified for their children enlisting the help of the CIA through a program called Operation Peter Pan that took children to the U.S. Jay Alvarez's brothers were only two of the 14,000 children relocated to the U.S. Humberto Alvarez, Jay's father made an admirable but dangerous decision to get his family out of Cuba on Monday, March 16th,1964. These details should be learned of during the performance since they are truly worthy of being seen thorough the passionate acting of Jay Alvarez. He portrayed these events with such earnest humility that the impact of his performance was nothing short of extraordinarily powerful. He did this with touching humor, political and historic responsibility as well as energetic depiction of all of his feisty but warm and animated family members, most notable of which was his mother. Jay Alvarez's performance was mesmorizing. He is a great actor with an emotional depth that is rare in its delicacy, impact and sincerity. His love of this story is evident. He tells it with humility and respect humbled by its truth and awed by its danger. If his father was here now he would watch it with tears in his eyes and a smile on his lips, much like the audience did. For more articles like Be Careful! The Sharks Will Eat You!, please visit the Stage Reviews Section of TimesSquare.com
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