Review: FRIDA...A SELF PORTRAIT at Milwaukee Repertory Theater

On a cold April evening, I headed to the Milwaukee Repertory Theater to see FRIDA…A SELF PORTRAIT with my partner and both of my parents who were visiting from out of town. Moments earlier, we had just collectively witnessed live the Artemis II space crew’s successful and safe return to Earth off the coast of California. My dad recalled excitedly tuning into the radio station during the 1960s space flights, amazed at the horizons we were crossing back then. Our adrenaline was just starting to lower again as we made our way downtown to witness what would be another vivid reminder of what types of horizons we can reach through masterful, honest, and vivid storytelling. 

My parents, who live in my hometown of Miami, Florida, are more tangibly familiar with Frida Kahlo and her works, as they’ve visited the Frida Kahlo Museum, also known as La Casa Azul due to its standout cobalt blue walls, while on a trip to Mexico City decades ago. They’ve walked the floors and rooms where Frida herself was born, where she grew up, where she lived with her husband Diego Rivera, and where she ultimately died on the upper floor. The museum both is and houses artwork that speaks to culture, trauma, love, philosophy, and an immeasurable span of both Mexican culture and the intimacy of human life. I specifically brought them to this play because of the impression that experience left upon them, and our shared cultural ties to Latin American stories. Vanessa Severo, playing Frida Kahlo (and other characters in Frida’s life, and even herself at times, during some of the play’s most vulnerable scenes), surpassed the task at hand of embodying the complex nuances of the portrait of a woman who was imaginative, genius, breathtaking in beauty, complicated, pained, iconic, exuberant, and deeply human.

Truly an artform in itself, the interplay between set (Jacqueline Penrod), costume (Katherine Davis), direction (Joanie Schultz), and storytelling was clever and original, utilizing clotheslines featuring both memorialized and non-memorialized looks, portraits, and stories of Frida’s life. In one scene in particular, Severo expertly uses one arm in suit jacket and plays both Frida Kahlo grieving and mourning her multiple miscarriages, and Diego Rivera comforting her in what becomes one of the most devastating and tender scenes on stage throughout her performance. These types of scenes are juxtaposed with quicker, wittier, and humorous lines shared with an interviewer during the later stage of her life. Severo holds down these energetic jumps masterfully creating a story that flows seamlessly.

It was truly a gift to see Severo’s beautiful take on a story that connects so many of my own, as my crew and I consisted of Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Panamanian roots, all deeply affected by the work and legacy of Frida Kahlo in a performance that defied artistic gravity.

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