A
Literary Saloon
&
Site of Review.

Trying to meet all your book preview and review needs.

Contents:

Main

the Best

the Rest

Review Index

Links

to e-mail us:


support the site


buy us books !
Amazon wishlist

the complete review - drama

La Chunga

by
Mario Vargas Llosa

general information | our review | links | about the author

- Return to top of the page -

Our Assessment:

B+ : effective entertainment

See our review for fuller assessment.

The complete review's Review:

       The title-figure of La Chunga is "a tall, ageless woman" who runs a restaurant-bar. The play is set in 1945.
       Among the regulars of la Chunga's establishment are the so-called "superstuds", four men who come here to drink and play dice. The play begins with them at play -- and one of them asks a question that's clearly been on all their minds: "Are you never going to tell us what you did that night with Meche, Chunga ?"
       From there the scene slowly switches back to the night in question, as the men recall it. One of them, Josefino, showed up with Meche -- an attractive young woman who immediately makes a great impression on the otherwise imperturbable la Chunga.
       Josefino plays dice -- and loses. Desperate for 3000 sols to stay in the game he offers la Chunga Meche for the night in exchange for the money; she accepts.
       In the second act the scenes then play out what the superstuds imagine might have happened between Meche and Josefino. Vargas Llosa does a fine job of presenting the mix of fact and fantasy here, of what the characters want to believe, and what might be truth -- revealing, in the process, a great deal about all the characters.
       Neatly composed, La Chunga is a good piece of theatre, a small story creatively and convincingly recounted.

- Return to top of the page -

Links:

• The complete review's Mario Vargas Llosa page
• Biography at books and writers
• Nobel Prize in Literature, 2010
• Mario Vargas Llosa site (Spanish)

• Fiction:
  • The Bad Girl
  • The Discreet Hero
  • The Feast of the Goat
  • In Praise of the Stepmother
  • The Neighborhood
  • The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto
  • The Way to Paradise
  • The Temptation of the Impossible
  
  
• Non-fiction
  • A Fish in the Water
  • The Language of Passion
  • Letters to a Young Novelist
  • The Perpetual Orgy
  • Wellsprings
  • A Writer's Reality
  
  
• Drama:
  • Three Plays:
    • La Chunga
    • Kathie and the Hippopotamus
    • The Young Lady from Tacna

• See Index of Drama books
• See Index of Latin and South American literature
• See Index of Books by Nobel laureates under review

- Return to top of the page -

About the Author:

       Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa was born in 1936 and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010. He has written many works of fiction and non-fiction, and has run for the Presidency of Peru.

- Return to top of the page -

© 2003-2018 the complete review

Main | the New | the Best | the Rest | Review Index | Links