Jorge Luis Borges once wrote: “A verse should have two purposes: communicating a specific fact and touching us physically, like a nearby ocean.” The play “Midnight Clear” recently performed at the IDB Cultural Center, inspired by the verses of “Song of Myself,” by Walt Whitman, draws on the footprints of the great American poet, outgoing and fun-loving, who sang his feelings out of an innate need to feel one with everybody.
The play, structured like a poem, bears a special likeness to the man who contained multitudes, an undated, captionless portrait that, as Borges wrote, restores the “primitive and now hidden truth” to speech.
Written by William Ospina and with artistic direction by Colombian actor Germán Jaramillo, “Midnight Clear” follows pathways plagued by contradictory feelings, from the fullness of life to its decline.
Harvey Rosensfit brilliantly portrays the bearded, vanquished poet, a self-invented common man who relives his own life from memory, exploring the multitudes that peopled it, exposing the libertarian cannons of the great writer, journalist and speaker that Whitman was.
“Song” includes everything, molded by a vision that enhances it: death, interpreted by actor Andrei Garzón, a woman (Jimena Ladino), the young poet (Ramiro Sandoval), a soldier (Marcelo Rueda), and a girl (Amalia Apellaniz) (Leda Matos).They all represent facets of the same identity.
Whitman's fascination with music and the art of public speaking underlie the entire play, through the score and musical direction by Pablo Mayor and the performance of Marcelo Rueda, who portrays the soldier. As in “Song of Myself,” Rueda embodies the persuasive, multifaceted voice of America itself and its bet on egalitarianism and democracy at a time when slavery was a topic of heated discussion and would eventually become an issue in the Civil War.
The old poet Walt is reflected in the play as a mirror, in Rosensfit as he sits confined to a wheelchair, respectfully pushed by his resigned young nurse (Leda Matos).
“Midnight Clear” was the first play presented at the IDB Cultural Center, and undoubtedly a delight for all those who enjoy the sublime magical world of poetry.