‘Bathing in Moonlight’ Review: Moonstruck

metroweekly.com:

Bathing in Moonlight (★★★☆☆), takes the road of least controversy to depict a relatively tame love that dare not speak its name between a devout pianist and her priest.Under Cruz’s bold direction of GALA Hispanic Theatre’s Spanish-language D.C.

premiere, Hannia Guillén, as dutiful daughter and mom Marcela, and Raúl Méndez, as passionate Padre Monroe, still generate the heat of two bodies burning to be together but fighting their urges.The padre even delivers a sermon about laying down barriers to love, before embarking on his perilous path of questioning why those barriers exist in the first place.Cruz fuses elements of poetry, history, theology, and surreal dream imagery to serve the well-acted romantic melodrama, which often turns on a mere glance or lingering touch.

Early on, Marcela gifts Padre Monroe a hat and helps him try it on, a simple gesture that Guillén and Méndez make into a brief, sensuous dance of repressed desire.Though Marcela seems too patly defined as a martyr for her faith and family, Guillén invests the portrayal with a genuine sense of self-reproach.

The proud Cuban-American daughter of immigrants, raised in the church, Marcela feels compelled by all her upbringing to reject the thought of Padre Monroe breaking his vows with her.Lovers in illicit affairs often are written to claim they can’t help it, but Guillén makes it believable that Marcela really wishes she could help it, but, despite her strong will to resist, just can’t.