La Gota Fria: The Cold Sweat

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Playwright Anna Capunay has her heart in the right place in trying to teach about alternative medical treatments but her La Gota Fria: The Cold Sweat is really just a series of conversations. She also seems to be too close to the material which is autobiographical (according to the program notes) to have a handle on the drama inherent in the situation. The scenes play like cinéma vérité but, as been proven in the past, this authenticity does not make a coherent stage play.

The author’s program notes tell us that the play is loosely inspired by her mother’s story which she hopes will be instructive for others in the same situation. However, her play ends just where the real drama begins. Like her mother, Capunay’s Queens heroine Josefina Gonzalez has been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer. Josefina has not told her family but has been undergoing both chemo and radiation. Her father Manuel who lives with her knows but she has kept it from her daughter Irene and son-in-law Alfredo, recently married who are visiting from Miami. When Irene hears, she decides to move back to New York.

However, family friend Enrique, a recently qualified veterinarian who is treating the family cat, equally shocked at the news, is not satisfied with the chemo and radiation treatment, particularly since Manuel’s wife and Josefina’s mother died of the same illness at the same age. Enrique knows of a doctor in Texas who has had great success with an alternative treatment of his own devising. The father of one of his former classmates was saved by this treatment. The play becomes a series of encounters as Enrique has to convince first Alfredo, then Irene, then Manuel and finally Josefina to go to Texas to try the treatment which will not be inexpensive as Dr. Cushing does not take medical insurance. Structurally, the play is rather undramatic once we realize this is where the play is going.

To inject some comedy in what could be a dark subject, the family refers to Enrique as “Moco,” or nosepicker from an early habit when he was a child. He is also the butt of many jokes getting physically assaulted by several of the characters. He doesn’t leave as although there is a 17 year age gap between him and Josephina he has been in love with her for years and they have had a previous fling. All of the characters like to quote lines from famous movies which seem forced in this context and are not very funny.

Dr. Cushing is based on the real and controversial Dr. Burzynski who uses antineoplastons to treat inoperable  cancer but the play is not very convincing as to why one should take his treatment. Reading us lists of people who have survived as a result of going to his clinic is not enough. We do not hear enough about the treatment and learn nothing about the side effects. When the play ends, we do not know the result for Josefina so that the play has no real ending.

Capunay’s characterizations are too thin, giving us only one or two items about each of her cast of characters, and they are mainly used as mouthpieces for various points of view. J. Santiago Suárez’s Don Manuel, a Peruvian immigrant, has given himself diabetes which has led to blindness after eating only junk food as part of grief over the death of his wife. He disapproves of anything other than the traditional medicine. His daughter Josefina (Pilar Valdés) was deserted by her daughter’s father when they were still teenagers and she has used some of her time for reading fine literature. She is planning on stopping both the chemo and radiation so she can stay home and spent more time with her family.

His granddaughter Yessenia Rivas’ Irene was a classmate of Enrique in public school, and has been recently diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder which seems extraneous to this play. She is unconvinced that a high priced, controversial treatment should be used on her mother. Her Cuban born husband Alfred (Danny Borba) is in pharmaceuticals, and is willing to research this new medicine. Although Jared Treviño’s Enrique has recently begun treating their cat when he finished medical school, he has been an integral part of the family for years which led to his relationship with Josefina. He feels that as Señora Gonzalez died at age 43 from the same illness, Josefina should go out on a limb and try something else.

While the play is in English, there are a good many untranslated insults, remarks and song lyrics which make the play a bit hard to follow for non-Spanish speaking theatergoers. Although the play is set in 1990, there is no atmosphere to express this except possibly for choice of songs that are used in the course of the play’s many scenes, but many may be new to some theatergoers. Each scene begins the same way with one of the characters entering the living room to talk with one of the other characters, usually Don Manuel who sits in his armchair most of the time. Other than this, there is little or no dramatic action.

The living room set by Danis Zhang is fine but does lock the cast into certain patterns on the stage due to the arrangement of the furniture. Director Gregory Lipson’s blocking too often sends the characters on the same route to the bedrooms on stage left. His casting is also problematic as Valdés as Josefina and Rivas as her daughter Irene look exactly the same age which is not believable. Additional, although Josefina has had chemo and radiation for three months prior to the first scene, it is not until the sixth of the play’s seven scenes that she looks the least bit ill. However, the casual costumes by Rivas are perfectly suited to the story and home milieu. Laine Flores’ fight direction is so realistic that one worries about Treviño’s Enrique going home black and blue each evening after the performance.

Anna Capunay has attempted to write a family drama in order to influence people to try alternatives to chemo and radiation. Unfortunately, in using her own family story, she has not thought out how to make this a convincing and persuasive play for others. Incidentally, the title comes from the song that singer Carlos Vives made famous in 1993 which literally refers to the weather, and not illness, though it may used metaphorically here as a cold front causing bad weather.

La Gota Fria: The Cold Sweat (through March 23, 2025)

Steve and Marie Segouros Theatre, The Players Theatre, third floor, 115 MacDougal Street, in Manhatan

For tickets, visit http://www.lagotafriaplay.com

Running time: one hour and 20 minutes without an intermission