Mark McClain Wilson and Casey J. Adler (Photo by Grettel Cortes Photography)
Reviewed by Martín Hernández
Playwrights’ Arena and Latino Theatre Company
Through June 16
At times poignant and humorous, at others confusing and monotonous, Boni B. Alvarez’s play is an earnest yet flawed tribute to Ralph Preiss, a German-Jewish boy who fled Nazi Germany in the late 1930s and found a refuge in the Philippines, only to encounter a brutal Japanese occupation during World War II. Loosely based on Preiss’s World War II experience, the heaps of flashbacks and subplots in the work’s episodic structure bog the tale down, despite director Jon Lawrence Rivera’s vivid staging and the production’s impressive technical aspects.
The Philippines was a U.S. colony from 1902 until 1935, when the U.S. declared it a commonwealth with its own internal government. From 1936 to 1941, under the “open door” policy of President Manuel Quezon, the Philippines took in over a thousand German-Jewish migrants to save them from Nazi genocide, something that was anathema to many other countries at the time, the United States included. (While not explored in the play, this is an intriguing political contradiction, considering that the U.S. government controlled the Philippines’ foreign affairs until its full independence in 1946 and the U.S. State Department reluctantly granted Quezon’s request for visas.)
In late 1944, pre-teen refugee Rudy Preissman (an adult Casey J. Adler), his father Isaac (Mark Doerr), a doctor, and his mother Lena (Jill Remez) join a desperate group fleeing the increasing brutality of the Japanese army. Ramil (Kennedy Kabasares), who has ties to the Filipino resistance, serves as their guide. Others on the trek are Ramil’s wife Dorna (Myra Cris Ocenar) and daughter Mousie (Angelita Esperanza), teenager Zar (Alexis Camins), Markus (Mark McClain Wilson), a German-Jewish WWI veteran, and his Filipina spouse, and Dorna’s sister Mimi (Giselle “G” Tongi.) They leave with only what they can carry.
As they leave Manila for a trek up the sacred Mount Banahao, an active volcano, they dodge Japanese reconnaissance and fighter planes, treacherous mountain cliffs, and even a wild boar. Mousie and Zar, Rudy’s classmates in Manila, constantly implore him to entertain them with stories of his past. He reluctantly relates his torturous Torah study for his bar mitzvah with a taxing but wise cantor (Remez) as well as a hilarious sequence of events leading him to a Manila movie set and his childhood chaperone service for a Filipina film star (Tongi). Haunting Rudy, however, is a recurring nightmare involving his grandmother back in Germany (Tongi) and flames that engulf him, the impetus of which he recounts in horrific detail.
Personifying the class and race dynamics of the travelers is the bourgeois European Lena, who wants to cart all her clothes – and her bed – on the trip. The otherwise sympathetic Lena comments on how she is now living like a dirty animal while bathing in a river with the Filipina women. While often leaning into histrionics in group scenes, the actors are more effective in bits calling for just a few of them. Zar acts out his own outlandish “movie” with the cinema actor and her egotistic co-star (Kabasares), and Rudy ends up as a “boyfriend” to a brash schoolgirl (an amusing Doerr). Adler as Rudy delivers very touching moments as he recites a Catholic prayer over Rudy’s fallen comrade, intones the Mourner’s Kaddish for another, and delivers his Torah recitation at a makeshift jungle bar mitzvah.
Christoher Scott Murillo’s multi-level set design, with trapdoors opening up to rivers and a gravesite, Azra King-Abadi’s lighting plot, especially when the fleeing group encounter bombings, and Jesse Mandapat’s sound design, from chirping birds to resounding ordnance, combine for a fruitful impression of a bush milieu. Boxes the refugees carry to represent their luggage double as innovative props along the journey. Meanwhile, Reggie Lee’s group choreography is impressive and makes for stunning visuals that drive home the frantic nature of the travelers’ flight.
The Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 South Spring St., Downtown LA.; Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 4 pm; thru June 16. www.latinotheaterco.org Running time: two hours and ten minutes with an intermission.
