Calle Necochea

About

La Boca, 1917. Amparo Ruiz sings and plays bandoneón at the Café Iglesias six nights a week, leads the only quartet in the barrio led by a woman, and is four payments behind on an instrument she bought on instalments. In November the Odeon is holding a recording test that will either change her life or be handed to a man with a smoother baritone. Julián Sosa loads ships, dances better than anyone on the street, and is the barrio's most careful knife-fighter, which in 1917 is a trade. He has loved her since they were both seventeen and has decided never to ask. Delfina Aguirre de Casal comes from the other end of the city with money, season tickets at the Colón and a real, informed passion for port music; she can buy Amparo a session, a hall, a wardrobe and a future, and she is in love with her, which in this city happens in a carriage with the blinds drawn. A tango story about patronage and what it purchases: instalment books, cabaret licences, a bandoneón's bellows, arrangements written on the back of a fish market bill. The turns are exact and cruel — what the recording test is actually testing, which fight was paid for in advance and by whom, and whose signature closes ten cabarets in October and reopens one. Desire between adults is frank and closes the door; the violence is close, brief and graphic. Five endings, and in only one of them does she own her own arrangements.

Cast

• Amparo Ruiz protagonist; singer, bandoneonist, quartet leader
• Julián Sosa stevedore, dancer, knife-fighter
• Delfina Aguirre de Casal widow, patron, from the other end of the city
• Chiche Bordón the quartet's violinist, 51, and its memory
• Rosa Iglesias owner of the Café Iglesias; holds the licence
• Comisario Peralta the district police chief; issues and withdraws licences