In Marco Antonio Rodríguez’s ghost-haunted family drama, a cancer-stricken father guzzles rum while raging against the dying of the light

Nino, the easily incensed lead character of Repertorio Español’s Barceló con hielo (“Rum on the Rocks”), has a lot to drink about. His stomach cancer’s acting up, he doesn’t much like his grown sons Sergio (Iván Camilo) and Dennis (hyperactive Javier Fano), and ghosts have begun creeping out of the walls. In Marco Antonio Rodríguez’s frequently powerful drama—first a bad-dad comedy, then a wrenching memory play—a Dominican past haunts Nino (Rodríguez), complete with repressed betrayals, absent friends and even a tyrannical historical revenant, the post-Trujillo president Joaquín Balaguer. Rodríguez wants to use this past to illuminate his complicated antihero: Nino spews racist invective and homophobic rants out the window at his New York neighborhood, and he evinces a total distrust of those nearest him. Dennis, granted, is a dim bulb, ambition-free and vulgar—and to exaggerate his awfulness, Fano plays to the crowd, making him into caricature. But both character and performer turn lovable when Fano plays off Camilo, an actor of deep reserve and serious gifts. Director José Zayas creates a few family moments between the three men that feel disturbingly realistic in their frank affection and casual violence.