REVIEWS / PRESS

You must see Platanos and Collard Greens! Make sure to bring your appetite for humor and good fun!

I was sitting there waiting for this much talked about Off-Broadway show. I was sitting pretty, not making too much noise, sitting up straight - you know - it's an Off-Broadway show, right?

The lights dim and the show begins with hip hop music - Big Pun to be exact. The people on the stage are college students walking around their campus just having a good time. The guys are checking out the girls and vice versa. Then someone runs onto the middle of the stage and shouts out, "When I say: 'plata', you say 'nos'! Plata-nos! Plata-nos!' The audience followed. But this young man center stage was not feeling it! He said real loud, "This show is about audience participation! So when I say 'Plata', you say 'NOS!!!'" Now the audience understands, including me. I got more comfortable in my seat and bopping to the beat said "PLATA-NOS!!! PLATA-NOS!!!"

The Off-Broadway show begins - with flavor! With our style! When it was funny we weren't afraid to laugh out loud! When it was time to respond with an "a-hum!" the audience made sure to agree out loud! When they played a song everyone loved the audience sang right along.

Do Platanos Go With Collard Greens? is simply just great fun. The question is explored culturally and historically with love between both cultures and quick history of the Latino culture and the Black culture and the unity between the two as far as growing up together in the same neighborhoods, in the same circles.

With out spoiling the story, the twist is that the African-American college student that is slowly falling more and more in love with the light- skinned Dominicana is a righteous Black male who is more concerned with how it looks for him to be with her than how he feels about her. La Dominicana is more concerned with her mother who doesn't want her daughter going out with un moreno because uno tiene que mejorar la raza. The daughter argues with her mother that her boyfriend is even lighter than her mother and her mother responds sternly and under no uncertain terms that she is NOT Black. And so the story unfolds. A novela set onstage.

Platanos and Collard Greens is sweet, true fun! Bring your appetite for laughter when you go to see this novela set on stage! Or better yet bring ese moreno guapo you've had your eye on for some time now!