My father had the tango bug. Anytime tango dancers appeared on Broadway, he was compelled to buy a ticket. Why? Dad himself was an awful dancer. He wasn’t Argentinian. He wasn’t even born when the tango craze first swept the world—beginning in Paris—in 1912. The appeal of the tango is inexplicable; that’s the point of “The Tango Diaries” at the Philipstown Depot Theatre in Garrison.
“The Tango Diaries” illuminates the lives of fanatic devotees of this intoxicating dance. Six actors perform, alternating with four first-class tango dancers who illustrate the narrative with snakelike ritual display—to live music.
The first story is told by Annie, a woman who wanders into a tango bar in New York City to escape a rainstorm, and abruptly decides to quit her job, leave her boyfriend, move to Buenos Aires, and study the emotive art form.
“Tango has such a huge underground global presence,” the director, Alice Jankell, remarks. “You know what country has the most tango festivals in the world? Finland!” What is the appeal of the tango? Is it the sexuality? The frisson of violence? The exoticism? Or some mystical essence the Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges hints at in his stories?
Jankell worked with Ron Hutchinson, coauthor of the play, in the late ‘90s, developing theater works for Disney. They reconnected years later in the Hudson Valley, and she directed a staged reading of “The Tango Diaries” in Carmel. In 2021 the play was dramatized on BBC radio, but this is its first actual full performance. Hutchinson has written widely for film and television, winning an Emmy for “Murderers Among Us: The Simon Weisenthal Story.” Alisa Taylor, a former dancer and Hutchinson’s wife, cowrote “The Tango Diaries.”
The Depot is an intimate 86-seat theater in a former railway station on the Hudson, directly across from West Point. In 1996 Metro-North magnanimously donated the Victorian structure to the Garrison Landing Association. A new railroad station was built right next to it, which means you can reach The Depot without a car! (The building appears in the movie Hello Dolly!)
For some reason, railroad stations have fabulous acoustics. Many well-known groups, such as Blonde Redhead and Okkervil River, have performed at the Depot, due to the fineness of the sound and the room’s intimacy.
Taking the helm last September, Alice Jankell is the theater’s first new artistic director in 20 years. She comes with an impressive portfolio as actor, director, and writer. Jankell was associate artistic director of the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and has written several plays, including “The Sweet Spot,” which debuted last winter in Manhattan.
“You don’t really serve a community unless you grow,” Jankell says of the Depot. She’s forged a partnership with Fable & Sow, a visionary theater school and sustainable farm outside Newburgh. Another link is with Theatre Now, a nonprofit nurturing new voices in musical theater. The Depot has also begun a series of staged dramatic readings, titled “Sometimes Sundays.” Professional actors perform brand-new plays, with a talkback afterwards, in which audience members respond to the playwright.
Jankell also launched the Professional Mentorship Program, where she teaches high school students the thousand skills necessary to direct a play. “Depot Docs” is a documentary series which often includes a Q&A with the film director.
For “The Tango Diaries,” the theater itself will be transformed into a tango milonga, a traditional Argentine cabaret, with a checkerboard floor and intimate round tables. Unlike the Broadway spectacles my father schlepped me to, the dancers will be up close. “Here you can see them sweat,” Jankell promises. “You’re breathing in and breathing out with the people onstage.”
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This article appears in May 2025.
