Espresso A Blasphemy Play Lucia Frangione by Lucia Frangione 9780889224957, 9781772010893, 9781772010909, 9781772010916, 0889224951, 1772010898, 1772010901, 177201091X instant download after payment.

Short-listed 2003 Jessie Richardson Award for Outstanding Original Play or Musical: Small Theatre

“Espresso is a pure, generous gift that reduced me to tears. It’s also one of the best arguments for Christianity I’ve encountered.” – Georgia Straight

Sexy, provocative & challenging, Espresso is a rich, dark, bitter hit of comedy & sensuality. One of Lucia Frangione’s blasphemy plays,’ it inverts the Catholic stereotypes of feminine sexuality to boldly examine their corresponding masculine sexual emblems of Father, Son & Holy Ghost. 

In an erotic world where men are traditionally cast as either fathers to be looked up to or sons to be looked after, where, for women, is the possibility of a flesh-&-blood lover, challenging her to open her heart without trespassing her will—a lover as he appears in the Song of Solomon: passionate, earthy, creative, vulnerable & beautiful— the avatar of the holy spirit? 

There has been a horrible car crash, & Vito, the patriarch of an immigrant family, has had his body smashed & his heart lacerated, his life hanging by threads of tubes & wires in an intensive care ward. His family has rushed in from all over the country for an anxious vigil of hope, prayer & memory by his bedside. In this crucible of anxiety, a single actress alternately narrates & enacts her own & her family’s history along with an uninvited narrator/actor, Amante (“lover” in Italian). 

As Amante engages all the women of the clan Rosa plays in a swirl of sharply portrayed characters—Vito’s mother, Nonna, forced into marriage at 13 but only now, at 67, experiencing the first intimations of her body’s desire; the pit-bull martyrdom of Vito’s second wife, Vincenza; & Rosa herself in her own thin, urbane skin stretched tight to hold in the red, passionate blood that boils just below the surface—we are never sure whether Rosa has created Amante or he has created her.

Cast of 1 woman & 1 man