Marta Portillo and Heather Lee Echeverria (Photo by Doug Catiller)
Reviewed by Amanda L. Andrei
Chance Theatre
Through May 26
RECOMMENDED
One late evening in December 2016, Mexican American teenager Angel swipes through flashcards with her mother, Alma. An SAT vocab word for her, a citizenship exam question for her mom. When the cards prompt them about the current president-elect, they stop cold, suddenly reminded of the precarity of undocumented immigrants and the elusiveness of the American Dream. In this sobering moment, their family drama becomes a mirror for reflecting upon the past eight years of life in the United States.
LA playwright Benjamin Benne places us in a small La Puente apartment, filling the modest living room and kitchen with the bilingual banter of mother and daughter clashing and reconciling over hopes and dreams. Director Sara Guerrero guides the pair into a loud entrance at the beginning of the play. A spirited Marta Portillo portrays Alma with comedy and flair, while an audacious Heather Lee Echeverria as her daughter Angel volleys back her fair share of adolescent sass and filial love. The boisterousness remains high for the first half — so much so that some of the characters’ physical concerns, such as a troubled stomach, tired feet, and a tipsy countenance, fade away under a heightened sense of urgency — but the story eventually levels out with more quiet moments of both reflection and anguish.
One such powerful moment comes when Alma realizes Angel has deviated from their carefully laid plan to attend her dream university. Her rage extends beyond smacking her daughter with la chancla—the infamous sandal-paddle — to venting her anger against the kitchen sink before crumpling to the floor in despair. Gazing up at the Aggie Blue and Gold UC Davis bumper sticker on the fridge (a touching detail from Christopher Scott Murillo’s meticulous set), Portillo distills the wounded and furious shadow side of not merely a working-class immigrant or a woman of color, but a mother betrayed. It’s a beautiful and honest moment guided by Guerrero’s vision, and Benne’s transition to Angel’s lullaby-apology gives emotional texture to the mother-daughter bond.
The strength and depth of the pair’s relationship contrasts against the murkier outside circumstances seeding their fear and stress. The perceived threats arise from an increasingly conservative political atmosphere and the history of white supremacist attitudes towards immigrants and borders. Onstage and in real life, these concepts beget genuine anxiety. Yet the speculative and placeless nature of the danger hinder its resonance as Alma and Angel appear somatically safe in their home. For instance, when their television set mysteriously blasts on multiple times with news commentary, it creates exciting moments that raise questions about glitches, omens, and post-election uncertainty taking physical form — but the physics of the preternatural moment quickly dissolve without further investigation.
In her dramaturg note to the audience, Karli Jean Lonnquist poses the question, “How does Alma call us to take action now, during another critical election year?” It’s a relevant inquiry, particularly when thinking about what might happen to these characters beyond the play’s end. Would Angel be a graduate student at UC Davis taking part in the encampments, or would her mother’s immigration status put her at risk to do so? What happens to personal politics once they venture forth from the kitchen counter into the streets?
While the expansive hope of Alma and Angel is touching, 2016 was another era. Viewed amidst the consternation of today, we need more than hope. We need to dig into our glitches and anxieties — our moments of failure and fear—and find ways to make sense of them beyond any distraction stirred by preconceptions of the “American Dream.”
Disclosure: This production’s director, Sara Guerrero, directed a reading of a play written by this reviewer several years ago.
Chance Theatre@ Bette Aitken Theater Arts Center on the Fyda-Mar Stage, 5522 E. La Palma Ave., Anaheim. Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sat.-Sun., 3 pm; thru May 26. https://www.chancetheatre.com
