REVIEWS
THE BRIDGE OF BODIES
"...a hypnotic one-woman performance... glowingly real..."
"... Moving... lyrical... brilliant..."
"The Bridge of Bodies not only entertains, but also enlightens."
"... a chameleon-like storyteller... By telling us the story of one individual, the playwright makes us care about a people."
"Gonzales is a likable, earnest actor who works hard to entertain her audience. She moves with great authority through this short evening as the central anchor surrounded by those characters who impact [Marie - Therese's] life."
"...an earnest, straightforward performance."
Real Women Have Curves
The cast works as an ensemble, supportive and affectionate as is appropriate for a play about bonding among a group isolated by their economic, social and gender identities. Kathleen Gonzales [Ana] smoothly moves between narrating the piece as the youngest member of the work crew, a writer who chronicles the events, and the action on the shop floor.
The five actresses: Cynthia Benjamin, Barbara Bonilla-Burnett, Kathleen Gonzales, Wendy Nogales and Marycarmen Wila develop a fine familial relationship and move into delightful farce....
Lopez was only 19 when she wrote "Real Women," which she based on her own stint working as an undocumented laborer (she later co-wrote the 2002 film version). She embedded her own experience into the character of the optimistic teenager Ana (Kathleen Gonzales) a recent high school graduate and budding writer who hopes to instill some feminist principles into her co-workers...
James and the Giant Peach
The team of Kathleen Gonzales and John Sloan are the most fun as they double as the ladybug and earthworm in some scenes and the nasty aunt and uncle (sic) in others.
The Body Project
The relationship between Tara (Nadia S. Pillay) and Serena (Kathleen Gonzales) is the most genuine in The Body Project. Gonzales delivers a finely nuanced performance as Serena. In fact, she is the most gifted actress on the stage.
-- Janice Cane
Serena (the excellent Kathleen Gonzales) is a full-figured Latina for whom food is as much mother love as nourishment. Her love-hate relationship with her body results in her trying to do away with
anything -- from wearing baggy clothes to taking medication that will all but eliminate her monthly cycles -- that reminds her she's a woman. Being a woman is messy and inconvenient, she feels, and it takes a tragic event for her to make peace with her curves.
The play does deal with the role of the medical establishment, most memorably in Caren Anton's hilarious portrait of a bored researcher working on a new contraceptive. The other actresses also turn in fine performances -- particularly Andrea Hatfield as an aging cosmetic surgery addict, Kathleen Gonzales as a budding poet who happens to be overweight and Rosemary Hartman as a mother who wearily informs her nagging daughter, "There is no skinny person inside me trying to get out!"
NINE
In the most humorous role, Ally Jenkins goes over the top as Guido's producer, Liliane LaFleur. Ms. Jenkins brings out the humor in the larger-than-life character and assisted by Lina Darling, her gun-toting maul (played in an appropriately heavy-handed way by Kathleen Gonzales) Ms. Jenkins makes up for the other's silence with the ultra-thick French accent she employs. Like Ms. Cash, she adds a bit of comic glimmer to the night.