Kuri's work has been seen in important theater festivals such as the Kunsten Festival des Arts in Brussels, the International Hispanic Theatre Festival in New York and Miami, The International Mexican Cervantino Festival, Grec Festival in Barcelona, Temporada Alta in Gerona, Festival Iberoamericano in Cadiz, Granada Abierta, Festival Iberoamericano in Bogotá, Caracas International Festival, and Puerto Rico International Theatre Showcase, among others.

Kuri described his play as "An Autumnal Farce of the Cosmic Anguish." Its theme is succinctly explained by a proverb that says, "It's better to have a broken heart than a rusted one." The play reflects on the risk that love implies the consequences of it, and the price to live an adventure. It unfolds in a sketchy form, with an atmosphere somewhat like an early 20th century medicine show--as if to be played before the oleos.

A young man named Fenix arrives in a nowhere town, accompanied by a mentor who is teaching him the art of traveling. He confuses love between a young woman and her older sister who is a prostitute; the latter of whom literally steals his heart because she longs to free herself from a mythical punishment. The play's second part is aptly subtitled, "The Cabaret of Discontinued Love." It contains many outward philosophical pronouncements on love, as when a braggart guard of a tenement house declares, "Love is the bitterness of the meringue, an expensive and sweet candy that becomes bitter; is the central garden where all paths come together. However, love doesn't exist; it is a path that invents itself in every mirage and offers to travelers the fleeting illusion of a city where travelers can stop to give their heart a rest…but…but everybody is happy and so am I."

Fenix, who cannot unravel the difference between having sex and being in love, finds he has no heart to give the younger woman, whom he actually loves. In the end he dies because he is literally heartless and the younger sister leaves the town for a better life.

The production is Kuri's La MaMa debut and features a new generation of collaborators from the US, Mexico and abroad. The cast, in formation as of this writing, includes Antonio Cerezo, Nicky Paraiso, Siho Ellsmore, John Benoit and Sasha Painter. Design is by Raine Bode and Antonio Cerezo.

The production came to La MaMa at the recommendation of Antonio Cerezo, an actor from Mexico City, who had hoped to appear in a production of the play there that did not come to fruition. Knowing of La MaMa's reputation as a "theater of the world," he facilitated the English adaptation by Edith Luna and proposed it to the attention of director Raine Bode, who selected it for her project this year.

"The Bitterness of the Meringue" was written soon after Kuri came to the U.S. in 2001 with "De monstrous y prodigiosla Historia de los Castrati: Monsters and Prodigies," performed by Compañía Nacional de Teatro de México as part of the International Hispanic Theater Festival at the Duke Theatre on 42nd Street. That play, directed by his Claudio Valdes Kuri, used extreme physical comedy coupled with live vocal, violin and harpsichord performances to explore the allegedly castrated male sopranos who turned the Baroque world upside down with their angelic voices and outrageous lifestyles. Ruth Lemmen, writing in Culturebase (online at http://www.culturebase.net/artist.php?56), states that the production was received enthusiastically at festivals in Europe, the USA and Mexico, establishing the director's international reputation.

Director Raine Bode has been steadily involved with La MaMa since 2000, working on such product ions as Ellen Stewart's "Seven Against Thebes" and "Dionysus Filius Dei" and "Sound of The Sun" by Arthur Maximillian Adair. She made her NY directorial debut in 2002 with "Bow Down" in The Club at La MaMa, and followed last season with "Dipteracon, or Short Lived S%*t Eaters," a Greek tragedy rock musical based on Jean-Paul Sartre's "The Flies." Prior to coming to New York, she was co-founder and artistic director of Mongrel Theatre, an independent company in Baltimore, MD.