Miami Theater Center opened its production of Hate! An American Love Story on February 8, 2013.
Christina Alexander shares stories of love in America and the country’s
struggle to understand or accept that different doesn’t mean wrong. One
actor plays eight characters who deliver 16 monologues in a multimedia
work that offers varied perspectives of what and who defines love in
America
Bill Hirschman reviewed for
Florida Theater On Stage:
Admit up front that the world premiere of Christina Alexander’s one-woman show Hate! An American Love Story is a tad unfocused, undisciplined, even sloppy theater. Then acknowledge that it’s also one of the most insightful and moving depictions that South Florida audiences have seen of the emotional viscera inside inter-racial, inter-gender relationships.
Alexander’s monologues portraying eight people seem like a report from deep in the trenches of a world struggling with redefining the previous cultural norm of “acceptable” heterosexual, homoethnic love.
Several monologues just end without a discernible climax. Alexander’s connective introductions to the pieces, in which she speaks to the audience and offers them Oreos, are mostly unnecessary interludes that allow Alexander to indulge in screeds of her own.
Alexander, a graduate of New World of the Arts, Barry University and the University of Miami, created this evening based on interviews over several years. When the work bowed at a workshop at M Ensemble in September, Alexander had the directorial guidance of Karen Stephens, a veteran of her own acclaimed one-woman show, Bridge and Tunnel. Alexander could use an extra set of eyes and ears again.
But even with its flaws, the gallery of portraits – by turns witty and contemplative – produce a poignant and illuminating evening.
Hate! An American Love Story plays at
Miami Theatre Center through February 23, 2013
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