Under a Mantle of Stars

by Manuel Puig, Ronald J. Christ (Translator), Ronald Christ (Translation)

In his first work written directly for the stage, the author of The Kiss of the Spider Woman creates a hilarious and shocking clash of desire and reality. Readers accustomed to Puig's dramatic novels will find in Under a Mantle of Stars a two-act drama that reads like a novella. Into the home of a bourgeois family come two strangers on their way to a masquerade ball. Within moments, the masters of the house take their visitors for long-dead friends, the sumptuous couple turns out to be a pair of jewel thieves fleeing the police, and the daughter is trapped in a melodramatic farce in which she takes the thief to be her ex-fiance while her mother believes him to be the lover she has waited for these past twenty years.

Manuel Puig first gained international recognition with his novel, Betrayed by Rita Hayworth , and went on to further fame and critical acclaim with The Kiss of the Spiderwoman. Under a Mantle of Stars is his first play written directly for the stage as well as the first to be published in English.

According to the New York Times , Puig is "one of the most consistently interesting . . . [authors] . . . to have emerged anywhere during the past ten years." Newsweek has said that Puig is "both a funny writer and a tenderly elegiac one." And the Washington Post has commented that "his mastery of plot, counterplot, the characters' scheming, his own, . . . lifts Puig into the circle of his peers," such as Borges and Garcia Marquez.

"Ronald Christ's translation is an authentic and careful rendering of this original work. The English version clearly replicates Puig's idiosyncratic forms of speech, characterization, and stage direction. Christ has created a script that is highly theatrical, interesting, and playable in English. . . . [ Under a Mantle of Stars ] stands on its own merits . . . [it] leaves us asking for more Puig as playwright and more Ronald Christ as translator."—Rodney Carl Reading, Latin American Theater Review

Genres: Drama, Latin American

66 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Manuel Puig (born Juan Manuel Puig Delledonne) was an Argentinian author. Among his best known novels are La traición de Rita Hayworth (1968) (Betrayed by Rita Hayworth), Boquitas pintadas (1969) (Heartbreak Tango), and El beso de la mujer araña (1976) (Kiss of the Spider Woman), which was made into a film by the Argentine-Brazilian Director, Héctor Babenco and in 1993 into a Broadway musical.

Reviews

[jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

my first thought upon concluding the first of manuel puig's stage plays, under a mantle of stars (bajo un manto de estrellas), was "what the hell was that?!" the argentine author and playwright, best known for his novel (and, later, stage adaptation), kiss of the spider woman, has created with his play a strange, affecting, and simultaneously disturbing and droll theatrical work. sharing qualities with the absurdist works of pirandello and pinter (and proximity on an alphabetized bookshelf), puig's play is surreally emotional and at times both harrowing and hilarious. there's an element of schadenfreude ever-present, as our curiosity is tempered by compassion and confusion.

as the nameless characters devolve ever further into their troubled psychologies, we're privy to the power of memory, tragedy, denial, and unresolved feelings. like a dreamscape gone terribly awry (for the reader, that is), under a mantle of stars is both frightful and foreboding. while a careful read is indeed rewarding, seeing puig's drama performed upon the stage must be a singular and rather unforgettable experience.

it doesn't matter who he is, it matters how he is.

*translated from the spanish by ronald christ (vargas llosa and a book about borges and his fiction, the narrow act)

[Juani Martignone · Rating 4 out of 5]

El libro está compuesto por dos obras de teatro fascinantes que se pueden leer cada una en una sentada. Están tan bien escritas que uno puede ver la obra frente a sus ojos mientras lee, quizás porque el autor agrega muchos detalles.
Bajo un manto de estrellas es una comedia de enredos graciosa, bizarra, con un final inesperado y genial.
El misterio del ramo de rosas, me gustó más, mucho más, puede leerse a Puig y su precisión exacta para los diálogos entre señoras, a la vez que cuenta una historia profunda, triste, que te deja con el corazón en la mano pero con un dejo final de alegría y humor.
Recomiendo mucho que lean obras de teatro, es un género poco leído y es súper gratificante.

[N · Rating 5 out of 5]

The setting: Argentina, 1948.

The action: It takes place in a living room of an upper crust couple.

The characters: The Master and the Mistress and their adopted Daughter live mundane lives until an unexpected visit happens. The memories of two friends who passed away in 1929 come back and haunt their household. Two jewel thieves, Lady Visitor and Visitor appear resembling the two friends that died.

Both Mistress and the Daughter have sexual desire and designs on Visitor. The supernatural, farce, and Oedipal desire all collide on this stormy rain soaked play by Manuel Puig- master of melodrama, technicolor dreams, and dramatic readings on the stage. It felt like a boozier, surreal take on Noel Coward's "Blithe Spirit" in which a man is haunted by the ghost of his first wife- summoned up by a medium by way of the immortal Madame Arcati. This one is more of a mishmash of wonderful, lurid ideas.

[Paulina Ree · Rating 5 out of 5]

me fascina todo lo de Puig, y estas dos historias son vivo reflejo de su gran talento.