Rita Moreno: Life Without Makeup

Berkeley Repertory’s Roda Theatre

Berkeley, Calif.

(510) 647–2949

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Rita Moreno has been “a Tinseltown stalwart for so long that she ought to get frequent-flier miles on the red carpet,” said Karen D’Souza in the San Jose Mercury News. During a 60-year career, the Puerto Rican singer, dancer, and actress became the first performer to win an Oscar, an Emmy, a Tony, and a Grammy. In this new revue, which plays as a “highly pleasurable showbiz memoir,” the star recounts her most memorable roles as well as the ups and downs of her life. Evidently, she is less comfortable with the personal material; “she was born a chameleon, not a navel-gazer, and that means the autobiographical impulse just doesn’t come easy.” Yet if Moreno “never quite bares her soul onstage,” she still radiates star power of a kind seldom seen today.

Some of what Moreno does reveal is fascinating, said Robert Hurwitt in the San Francisco Chronicle. While her tempestuous relationship with Marlon Brando is the stuff of “fairly well-known Hollywood lore,” it rates as a surprise that she had a fling with Elvis in order to make Brando jealous. Moreno’s larger story is a reminder of just how racist Hollywood was in the 1950s. Born Rosa Dolores Alverio, Moreno had to change her name and her complexion, and endure the lecherous attention of studio bosses, just to win the stereotypical “hot-blooded Latin” roles that seemed her only option. While recounting all this, Moreno “commands the stage with ease,” as if the audience were a group of old friends. Spending two hours with her is a pleasure.