Photo by Paul M. Rubenstein
Reviewed by Catherine Crouch
City Garage
Through December 13
Border Crisis is a new play by Charles A. Duncombe, based on Polish playwright Sławomir Mrożek’s 1967 The House on the Border. Mrożek’s work was recently translated into English by Pavel Rybak-Rudzki, and as the program notes tell us, the story has been “considerably altered to fit our circumstances here today in this country.”
Billed as an absurdist comedy, Border Crisis follows an average American family who suddenly find themselves in the middle of an international border dispute. Their home is stormed by government officials, diplomats, and border agents who demand their compliance to an increasingly bizarre list of demands, slowly cracking each family member’s varied sense of loyalty to the idea of America.
Duncombe’s set and lighting design are both excellent, enhancing the chaos and fun without overwhelming us. However, his script struggles to capture the same pandemonium while also delivering the precise commentary that it’s aiming for. Perhaps it is a vestige of the translation, but much of the humor feels outdated, especially in contrast to the very fresh and timely subject matter. There is a lot of comedy to be found in clever jabs at bureaucracy and its inefficiency, yet many potent moments are lost within non-conversational dialogue.
Likely to preserve the play’s Polish origins, the family grandmother (Geraldine Fuentes) was born in Poland—the “old country”—and was taken to a concentration camp as a baby. This is supposed to serve as a point of comparison to the play’s present-day discussions of immigrants, deportation, and encampment. Fuentes delivers a moving, dramatic monologue about her past and the events that befall her in the play, yet it is tonally incongruent to the light-hearted lunacy of the rest of the production.
Most discordant is how this adaptation mismanages its discussions of race. Audiences are unwaveringly supposed to understand that the play’s central family is the stereotype of white, apolitical America, but the two children, a teenage daughter and son, are played by non-white actors (Hilary Jang Oglesby and Justin Parrish). While they both deliver satisfactory performances, it is difficult to reconcile their identities with the other characters’, especially against the backdrop of America’s current persecution of non-white immigrants and the ICE raids tearing through cities like our own. This crisis is overtly racial, and casting the new generation with actors-of-color does little to redress the incongruity.
The story of Border Crisis is by no means a bad one: strongest is its manifestation of the idea that being a prisoner in your own home—in your own nation—can happen to anyone. Yet this strength is compromised by the framing of this adaption. If this is now an American play, it neglects to portray the cruelty of our actual border crisis, and how this cruelty affects its true victims—who are neither Polish nor white. Frédérique Michel directs.
City Garage at Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave., Building T1, Santa Monica. Fri.-Sat., 8 pm; Sun., 4 pm; Thru Dec. 13. https://citygarage.org/ Running Time: Approximately 80 minutes with no intermission.
