Enchanted Lives in a Tempest's Path

BYLINE: By NEIL GENZLINGER

SECTION: Section B; Column 0; The Arts/Cultural Desk; THEATER REVIEW 'BLIND MOUTH SINGING'; Pg. 11

LENGTH: 325 words

''Blind Mouth Singing,'' a strange, beautiful play by Jorge Ignacio Cortinas, is set in that hazy place between the person you are and the person you want to be, or could be, or are in danger of becoming. It's all about the push and pull that goes on there, the escaping and avoiding, and the staging it is being given by the National Asian American Theater Company complements Mr. Cortinas's lyrical musings expertly: dreamy, unhurried, using the full width of the Baruch Performing Arts Center stage.

Mr. Cortinas, working in the magic realism tradition, serves up a story that has one foot in the literal world but the other somewhere else. Reiderico (Jon Norman Schneider), a timid young man with an overbearing mother (Mia Katigbak), has a look-alike friend named Lucero (Alexis Camins) who lives in a well. Reiderico's brother, Gordi (Orville Mendoza, showing an aptitude for comic relief), is intent on stealing cigars so that he can take up smoking so that he can quit smoking. Their aunt (a captivating Sue Jean Kim) goes to the market in a veil and administers ointment to syphilitics.

Mr. Cortinas employs a classic cliche to signal that changes are ahead for all these people: a storm is coming. But in his hands it doesn't feel hackneyed; the huge fan, or maybe it's an airplane propeller, at the back of Zach Zirlin's bold set, sometimes twirling, sometimes ominously still, has a transfixing effect.

Some theatergoers might find Ruben Polendo's direction too languid; the pace, careful and contemplative, never varies. But Mr. Cortinas's vision and words, made even more compelling by this production's multiculturalism, are meant to be pondered. ''What are you doing?'' Lucero asks Gordi at one point.

''Squinting.''

''Why?''

''This is how men look at the world.''

''Blind Mouth Singing'' continues through Oct. 6 at the Baruch Performing Arts Center, 55 Lexington Avenue, at 25th Street, (212) 279-4200; ticketcentral.com.