What brings two lovers together may be more obvious than what keeps them in sync. An inviting smile and a smooth opening line can cut through the noise of a crowded club, but then what? In the case of “Bees & Honey,” which opened Monday at the MCC Theater, eyes and hips join in on bachata’s gutsy guitar and eight-beat beat.
This Dominican style of music and dance, with its sensual cadence and appeals of heartache, is a fundamental metaphor in this two-handed play between boy and girl by the playwright Guadalís Del Carmen. After falling in line on a steamy night out, Johaira (Maribel Martinez) and Manuel (Xavier Pacheco) begin a duet that soon comes to the conclusion that they share an apartment in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood.
She is a prosecutor who rises up the ranks to prosecute high-profile cases; he is a mechanic with plans to expand his auto repair shop across the five boroughs.
In the next scene, they navigate the rhythm of a long-lasting romance. immersed in the tenor and flavors of their Afro-Dominican background. Instinctively they sometimes slip into Spanish, teasing and supporting each other as their lives remain intertwined.
Presented in collaboration with the Sol Project, the true-to-life naturalism of ‘Bees & Honey’ is more interested in capturing culturally specific details than breaking new ground with an original plot. The churn of daily ins and outs in director Melissa Crespo’s staging of a catalog-colored living room by designer Shoko Kambara has a familiar sitcom quality. And almost every story development reflects an unavoidable platitude (sex life is declining, women are getting pregnant, the elderly need care). For a wedding drama that lasts two hours, including an intermission, it feels light-hearted and surprising.
But what sets Johaira and Manuel apart, and how their syncopation thrives and falters, is the texture of their shared heritage. Del Carmen skirts the edges of stereotype by underlining qualities variously associated with Dominican men and women, but ultimately manages to create believable, if conventional, characters. Del Carmen betrays a heavy hand in how Johaira forces Manuel to read bell hooks, as an antidote to his inherited machismo. Her prosecuting sexual assault cases in court adds synthetic emotional fuel to the high-stakes climax of the play, which happens offstage with people we never meet.
Still, the ease and electricity between Martinez and Pacheco, whose performances deepen as the union becomes predictably more complicated, give the production a tacky appeal. Johaira is by turns cocky, soft and a stranger to herself, inner tensions that Martinez embodies with radiant transparency. And Pacheco’s Manuel is full of empathy and eroticism, reflexively attentive and affectionate, ready to respond to the slightest provocation. They seem to swing perfectly until they don’t. So what happened? If Johaira says of dancing bachata, “You lose your footing and the moment is over.”
Bee honey
Through June 11 at MCC Theatre, Manhattan; mcctheater.org. Running time: 2 hours.
