My Celia Cruz Shrine
This just in from Associated Press:
Playing the Queen of Salsa on stage is a dream come true for Xiomara Laugart, the star of the musical “Celia: The Life and Music of Celia Cruz”….Through 30 songs once performed by the legendary singer, the musical covers Cruz’s birth in Santo Suarez, Cuba, in 1925, to her death in 2003 in New Jersey.
…in what is now my New Jersey apartment, to be exact (and I’ve got one of her iconic wigs, above, which had fallen behind a built-in drawer in my bedroom, to prove it).
Guess I’ll have to get a ticket when the musical opens next month Off-Broadway at New World Stages. Unlike LACMA’s labels, the play will be done in both Spanish and English. Celia herself was not comfortably bilingual, however. Or, as she charmingly says on a recording of one of her concerts:
My English is not very good-looking!