Betting on a Rooster in ‘No One Writes to the Colonel’

NEW YORK — The grandest presence onstage at Repertorio Español belongs to the smallest creature there: a handsome rooster with luxurious plumage in fiery tones and a strikingly comfortable rapport with his principal scene partner.

That would be the human star of the show, the excellent Germán Jaramillo, who plays the title role in “No One Writes to the Colonel,” adapted by Verónica Triana and Jorge Alí Triana from the novella by Gabriel García Márquez. But it is Horatius, a sweater cock, who most commands our attention — because animals onstage are never performing in the same sense that people are, and because he seems so remarkably at home. A frightened animal is a misery to watch, but Horatius appears to trust Jaramillo. This chicken is doing just fine.

So is much of the rest of this intimate, transporting production, though the level of Jaramillo’s acting is a rarity. Directed by Triana, the play is performed in Spanish and handily subtitled in English, if you want, on the seat back in front of you. (The English translation is by Jack Bustos, the subtitling by Edna Lee Figueroa.)

At 75, with an ailing wife (Zulema Clares), the colonel is retired and in desperate need of a promised pension from the Colombian government that will not come. The couple’s son, recently dead, left behind the rooster, and this is where the colonel places his bet on their future.

It is only rainy October now (the sound of that downpour, by Jimmy Tanaka, is deeply atmospheric), but come the cockfights in January, the bird will be a moneymaker. Provided, that is, that the colonel and his wife don’t starve to death spending their scarce money to keep their winged hope alive.

Jaramillo is a lovely, likable colonel — a man with a grim sense of humor to match a grim life, and if he’s too optimistic, too impervious to misery for his own good, he is at least funny about it. As a husband, he is maddening, but also a charmer. Playing opposite a chicken, he is an unflappable pleasure to watch.

Luis Carlos de la Lombana is an amiable straight shooter as the family doctor, and Alfonso Rey does nicely as the colonel’s cruelly complacent slob of a lawyer.

This is a solid production, whose design (including Raul Abrego’s set, Manuel Da Silva’s lighting and Fernando Then’s costumes) makes watching it feel like stepping into the pages of Márquez. And, for fans of foreign-language theater, it’s a welcome immersion into another culture — not from a company touring from elsewhere, but made by Spanish-speaking artists here at home.

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‘No One Writes to the Colonel’

Through May 12 at Repertorio Español, Manhattan; repertorio.nyc.

Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.