Berenice Diaz and Leah Haile (Photo by Sean Durrie)
Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Loft Ensemble
Through February 11
Playwright Tony Menéses’s La Cocina is set in the kitchen of an upscale restaurant in New York City where an assemblage of kitchen and wait staff labor to deliver class-act comestibles to an appreciative clientele. As in Elizabeth Irwin’s compelling My Manana Comes, produced at the Fountain Theatre in 2016, La Cocina focuses on the lives of overworked and underpaid restaurant employees who struggle to make a living while clinging to their dreams.
Directed by Adam Chambers, the script provides a platform for 19 actors who perform with energy and enthusiasm. But while Irwin’s play presents fully fleshed-out characters and a pronounced moral dilemma, La Cocina lacks sufficient depth and conflict. Most of the roles are thin and peripheral to the drama. As for the dialogue, it’s loaded with restaurant parlay that may serve a purpose when setting up a story, but grows old quickly when it’s woven so predominantly throughout an entire script.
The characters most central to the drama include Pablo (Alejandro Mungaray), the worker most vocally sensitive to social inequality. Pablo also suffers from a sense of personal inadequacy that comes out in his relationship with his girlfriend Helen (Jay Hoshina) who frequently makes him feel small. There’s Paul (Max Reed III), the target of disapprobation from among his co-workers because he shoved Wesley (Estaban Vasquez), a gay colleague, after Wesley planted a kiss on his cheek (this issue deserves a more complex, probing exploration). Monique (Leah Haile), the new chef, is the person with the most gravitas — a gifted professional who’s come to La Cocina (the name of the restaurant as well as the play) after her own restaurant folded. Now she’s back to working for someone else, in this case La Cocina’s ungracious and mercenary proprietor, Sylvia (Berenice Diaz), whom her employees refer to (appropriately) as the bruja.
Among the ensemble Haile’s performance is the most notable: First, her character is pretty much the only adult in the room, and second, she’s most convincing as a woman who’s had to let go of her dream. Diaz as the establishment’s super-mean boss settles too comfortably into caricature. Other turns among those actors actually involved in the conflicts fall into the “okay” category. Several who appear in background roles— Sean Alan Mazur, Sarah Nilsen and Emelie Felina — make their mark via the alacrity and craft they employ when, as restaurant workers, they dart about the stage.
While the actors do a good job of miming their various tasks, the repeated beating and mincing and slicing into empty bowls and food-less cutting boards eventually becomes too tediously evident to ignore.
Lighting designer Tor Brown utilizes an abundance of royal blue hues to enrich the story. Scenic designer Madylin Sweeten Durrie adequately meets the challenge of recreating a commercial kitchen to accommodate the large cast, given the small venue.
Loft Ensemble, 11031 Camarillo St., N. Hollywood. Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 7 pm; thru Feb. 11. www.loftensemble.org. Running time: approximately 90 minutes with an intermission.
