By Fredric Dannen
Leonardo da Vinci was widely known as a polymath, with notable achievements as a painter, sculptor, engineer, scientist and architect. Far less frequently mentioned were his achievements in gastronomy. Leonardo loved to cook and once ran a tavern restaurant with the painter Sandro Botticelli. His notebooks contain recipes, cooking notes and tips on table etiquette, along with designs for some ingenious kitchen contraptions, including a spaghetti-molding machine and a device for ridding water barrels of frogs.
In 1981 Renaissance scholars Shelagh and Jonathan Routh compiled Leonardo’s kitchen notes in a book that mixed historic fact with fiction. The fiction part concerned a “Codex Romanoff,” a manuscript supposedly acquired by the Russian imperial family and housed in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, containing Da Vinci’s secret recipes. This fanciful quasi-history inspired Mexican playwright Estela Leñero to write her award-winning comedy/drama The Codex Romanoff which premiered in Mexico City in 2006 and is being performed in San Miguel for the first time as a production of La Troupe México.
The Codex Romanoff, directed by Marcela Brondo and featuring an outstanding cast of Mexican actors from various cities, will be presented at the San Miguel Playhouse, Avenida Independencia 82, in Spanish with projected supertitles in English, on August 14 (3pm), August 17 (7pm), August 20 (3pm), and August 21 (3pm and 6pm). It is the only recurring theatrical production in the newly inaugurated FASMA (Festival de las Artes San Miguel de Allende), a 10-day festival of nearly 70 events, created by the city’s most important cultural institutions. (For more information, please visit fasma.com.mx.)
Brondo previously directed Las Madres, one of the most spectacular theatrical productions in San Miguel history; theatergoers flew in from Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago to see it. La Troupe was created in 2017 as San Miguel’s only strictly bilingual theater company, a bridge-building social experiment for our bicultural city. All of its productions to date – Tooth and Claw, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Las Madres, Shakespeare’s Ricardo III, The Parnassus Project – have been staged at the San Miguel Playhouse. Jim Newell, the artistic director of the Playhouse, who died last month, was an enthusiastic supporter of La Troupe and its mission.
The Codex Romanoff has been adapted as a live radio play, with live music composed and performed by Ken Bichel, one of San Miguel’s musical stars. Set in mid-19th century Mexico and on the high seas, Leñero’s ingenious work concerns Aurora, a virtuoso chef who happens to be a novitiate in a Mexican convent and who longs to get her hands on the da Vinci manuscript. The recipe book is taboo in the convent, where the rigid Mother Superior equates culinary pleasure with carnality. “Temptation,” she says, “starts with food.” Aurora leaves the convent and takes to the sea on a journey of self-discovery and a search for faith.
Leñero, who says she will attend the San Miguel production, writes on themes of women and the marginalized. While Codex Romanoff explores those serious themes, it is also a highly entertaining and funny play.
Reserved seat tickets are 300, 200, and 100 pesos, available at Boleto City and Mercado Sano, Monday through Saturday, 11am to 5pm, or online at boletocity.com.
Theater
The Codex Romanoff, by Estela Leñero, directed by Marcela Brondo
In Spanish with projected English supertitles
Sun, Aug 14, 3pm; Wed, Aug 17, 7pm; Sat, Aug 20, 3pm; and Sun, Aug 21, 3pm and 7pm
San Miguel Playhouse, Avenida Independencia 82
300 / 200 / 100 pesos
Boleto City, Mercado Sano, Monday through Saturday, 11am to 5pm
e-tickets: boletocity.com
