“What must it have been like to know rock ‘n’ roll only through contraband records, only in the rare moments when tinfoiled antennas can beam in MTV, between power shut-offs — and then suddenly have the chance to get close enough to Springsteen to feel his glow, his sweat?

Martinez’s play, directed by Margarett Perry, shows how imagination is an act of compassion, how asking, “What must it have been like for you?” humanizes those whom we would make other or lesser. Martinez, who fled Cuba as a child in 1980, is astute about how life under an authoritarian government, where you’re always being watched and anyone in your life might betray you at any time, is a bit like being trapped inside an absurdist play.

“Born” makes it understandable, natural that a shopper would insist that a clerk (Lauren Hart) sell her two left shoes, or that a pair of would-be lovers (Von Wulfen and Christopher Reber) might suss each other out by telling jokes that get increasingly morbid, until no one can laugh any more, or that within moments of meeting, Anne would be teasing with hairspray the mane of a staffer at her hotel.

Lily Janiak, San Francisco Chronicle

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