Even today, as Donald Trump recklessly exploits the xenophobia of American voters, the Statue of Liberty, rising majestically in New York Harbor, is a powerful symbol of New World freedom to millions of visitors and waves of immigrants as well as soldiers and native travelers returning home. Designed by sculptor Frédéric Bartholdi, the monument was meant as a gift from the people of France to the U.S. to commemorate the centennial of the Declaration of Independence. Because of delays in its financing, conception, and construction, the statue was finally commemorated in 1886, 10 years after the centennial, on the former Bedloe’s Island, atop a stone pedestal that was locally funded and built. Inside that pedestal, on a plaque, is a poem, “The New Colossus,” by Emma Lazarus, that sums up the meaning of Lady Liberty, as she has come to be known. “With silent lips,” Lazarus wrote, the statue speaks: “Give me your tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,/ The wretched refuse of your teeming shore./ Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,/ I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
In Provincetown resident Fermín Rojas’s new play, Liberty Talks: A Colossal Satire, now having its world premiere at the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater, the statue’s mythological reputation is defended, examined, and exploded. Rojas does this by turning the monument into a character, Libby, who confronts other statues (such as Blind Justice and Sojourner Truth) and characters who are part of her story, from Bartholdi in France to a descendant of Lazarus in the future. Rojas is an immigrant himself, having fled Castro’s Cuba with his family in the 1960s, and he is a fixture in the Provincetown art scene these days as an actor, writer, and documentary filmmaker at DKR Films, which he runs with his husband, Jay Kubesch. Though Liberty Talks is subtitled a “satire,” it’s more of a fantasia — a time-jumping mélange of real-life figures and surreal encounters that shed light on some of the lesser-known aspects of Lady Liberty and her creators.
For example, Lazarus, who was an activist for Jewish refugees fleeing pogroms in Europe, was a lesbian. Or: the Statue of Liberty was also meant to commemorate the end of the Civil War, preserving the Union and ending slavery in the U.S. France’s special kinship with the United States has always been based on the connection between the American and French revolutions and the principles of the Enlightenment that were behind both of them.
It seems apt in this context that Libby is played by a Black actor, Brandon Curry, who is onstage for virtually all of the two-act play’s two hours. He gives a bravura, outsize performance that never strays into the excesses of camp. And he has top-notch support from the entire cast, often in multiple roles: Sam Perwin as a passionate, tormented Bartholdi; Miriam Kulick as Blind Justice; Richarda Abrams as Sojourner Truth; Eileen Sugameli as Emma Lazarus; and Pedro González as a teacher on a field trip.
Director Janice L. Goldberg keeps the action flowing at an unrushed and believable pace, and Christopher Ostrom, WHAT’s producing artistic director, functioning here as the scenic and projection designer of Liberty Talks, provides the performers with a lush onstage world in which to perform — the multilevel set, a mix of cool metal and dark wood, is a stunner. Likewise, the costumes by Carol Sherry and lighting and sound design by Eric Nightengale are exquisite.
I was reminded of Wicked while watching Liberty Talks: both take an iconic figure and peek behind a glossy façade to find the real story of how they came to be, full of contradictions and ironies. There is much that is disillusioning in Rojas’s play, just as there is in the American Dream. The land of the free is a promise that is often kept and often broken. It’s more of an ongoing struggle, and that’s exactly what Liberty Talks captures on a very personal level.
Not Easy Being Green
The event: Liberty Talks: A Colossal Satire by Fermín Rojas
The time: Through Oct. 6, Thursday through Saturday at 7 p.m.; Sunday at 3 p.m.
The place: Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater, 2357 Route 6
The cost: $48.75 (including fees); $45.25 seniors; $18.75 students and balcony, at what.org or 508-349-9428