RECOMMENDED A marriage as metaphor for the political state. A society in which men subjugate their women with exaggerated machismo. The pervasive racism between blacks and whites and the cruel repression of gays by straights. A quick distillation of the themes percolating throughout Cuban-American dramatist Eduardo Machado’s gastronomic and garrulous “The Cook, ” opening the new season of plays in the Goodman’s Owen Theater, might make you feel like it’s a meal to which you’ve partaken before. So it’s a credit to Machado, director Henry Godinez and the consistently absorbing Karen Aldridge in the title role that you leave the theater satiated but not stuffed, and definitely hungry for more from this writer. That the playwright has spent much of his career examining the fascinating dynamic between Cuba and her exiles, as well as the emotional and sexual repression of people caught between two cultures, it may not be that long of a wait. In the meantime, “The Cook” proves a satisfying slice of Cuban life that despite its weighty topics avoids the high-minded civics lessons and handles its issues with wit, humor and total honesty. This is a three-course play set in a Cuban kitchen during tumultuous times: 1958, the eve of Castro’s coup; 1972, showing us the emotional costs of that revolution; and 1997, the satisfying climax in which people and politics come full circle. Our guide throughout this culturally exotic yet emotionally familiar journey is the character of Gladys (Aldridge), the cook entrusted to care for the house of her fleeing aristocratic employer in 1958, and for whom she wastes precious years hoping will return. In those four decades Gladys and her husband (the likeable Edward F. Torres) suffer betrayals, lose family and friends and almost each other. Underneath it all, however, is Gladys’ love for and ability to take refuge in the preparation of a cornucopia of Cuban cuisine. It’s all undeniably bittersweet, yet with Aldridge’s utterly compelling, simultaneously stubborn and vulnerable account of Latin American womanhood, palatable throughout. (Fabrizio O. Almeida)
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