During one flashback in Nilo Cruz's play Lorca in a Green Dress, about Spanish poet-playwright Federico Garcia Lorca, Lorca's friend Salvador Dali pronounces, “We have just seduced reality.” Even if Cruz's tribute to one of Spain's great creative minds isn't the strongest theatrical work Ñ it's less about telling a story than presenting a series of snapshots that, unless you already know Lorca, don't offer much cohesion Ñ there is a certain magic in hearing the playwright's and Lorca's evocative words float and dance in both the dreamy memories that swirl onstage and disappear with a poof, and the stark purgatory in which the play is set.
Before the play begins, Lorca is murdered by fascists during the Spanish Civil War for being both an intellectual and a presumed homosexual. He finds himself in the afterlife surrounded by less famous, also recently dead people who are there to play aspects of his psyche, re-enact scenes from and usher him out of life (capped by a weird Our Town-like visit to Earth).
Director Jennifer Sage Holmes wisely keeps the set clean and simple, allowing Christopher Davis' original music and the dialogue (“They say at night, your heart takes the shape of a shoe and you walk all the way back to Granada”) to paint a backdrop. A couple actors stand out (Rajesh Gopie is exuberant and charming as Dali), but language that seduces you into pondering your own mortality is the real reason to go.

Fridays, Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 5 p.m. Starts: July 20. Continues through Aug. 27, 2012

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