Steven Haworth | The play is a farce about tragic people.

Zacharia Smythe, assistant professor of art, has come to Madrid to take a short sabbatical and study a painting by Fernando Rafael Vasquez de la Cruz. Zach considers the painting a masterpiece and the painter one of the greatest Spanish artists of the last 100 years. He is entirely alone in this. The artist has been missing for three years, and those who are familiar with his work believe he is dead. Nevertheless, nothing will deter Zach from betting any hope of a real career on championing his favorite to the art establishment by writing an article about this enormous painting.

This mission will require all his focus, a focus already beset by several difficulties. He has run out of professional chances. The memory of his wife's suicide preys on him. His time in Madrid is limited. His sobriety is tenuous. Enter an astonishingly brilliant and beautiful Spanish woman full of secrets and rage. Teresa Flores first approaches Zach in the museum while he is studying the painting. She gradually reveals truths about herself, including a claim to have actually met Fernando, and the game is afoot. Through further revelations, sexual encounters, scholarly collaboration, a theft, a knife attack, and an encounter with a mysterious, gun-wielding Blind Man in a bar, Zach and Teresa finally meet the great Fernando, which leads to an act previously unimaginable.

Featuring: Rex Young, Miriam Laube, and Douglas Rowe, with stage directions read by Rachel Kostrna.

Learn more at ashlandnewplays.org/play/fernando/