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SCHOOL OF THE AMERICASPublic Theater, 425 Lafayette St.; (212) 239-6200. Through July 23.
EVEN with crippling asthma, that Che Guevara sure was one chatty guy. At least he is in Jose Rivera's new play about the famed revolutionary's last days before his execution in Bolivia in 1967.
Depicting a series of encounters that supposedly took place between Guevara (John Ortiz) and a religious young teacher (Patricia Velasquez) who visited him while he was confined in a tiny schoolhouse, "School of the Americas" is the sort of fanciful history lesson in which a true-life character is given the opportunity to express himself - ad nauseum.
Rivera also penned the Oscar-nominated screenplay for "The Motorcycle Diaries," and, like that romanticized depiction of Guevara's youthful adventures, this play portrays him in a deeply sympathetic light. At one point, Che berates himself for his arrogance in not learning the language of the people he was attempting to convert - and that's about as negative as the portrayal gets.
In between interruptions by a hostile military guard (Felix Solis), Che and the teacher engage in lengthy discussions about politics, revolution, religion and sundry other topics. The dialogue is more than a little florid: He exhorts the teacher, Gary Cooper-style, to "look for me, if you can, in the bright clear things you see in the eyes of those kids you love so much."
That's subtle compared to the scene in which the teacher crosses herself with mounting intensity as Guevara shouts out an increasingly vulgar series of expletives.
Needless to say, things culminate with an intense, if short, burst of physical passion - all the more surprising since Guevara spends much of the evening literally gasping for air.
The playwright takes pains to provide contemporary allusions, from references to Guantanamo Bay to the play's title, also the name of a famous American military training institution.
Under the focused direction of Mark Wing-Davey, Ortiz provides the necessary intensity as Che, and Velasquz, making her U.S. stage debut, is very appealing as the teacher. Even so, they can't lift the play above its schematic elements.
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