Favorite Cousins
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Casa 0101 Theater
Through May 21
Perhaps the word gentrification doesn’t have to refer to real estate and property values alone. Perhaps it could refer to people as well — those individuals who flee their embattled ethnic neighborhoods for affluent enclaves that hold the promise of upward mobility and safety.
That certainly applies to Frances (Vanessa Arias-Herrera), one of the cousins in Lindsey Haley’s world premiere play, Favorite Cousins at Casa 0101 in Boyle Heights. Frances has plotted her escape from her Latino neighborhood since her parents’ early deaths sent her to live with her grandmother in Santa Monica.
Make no mistake: this isn’t the Santa Monica where a two-bedroom bungalow can set you back a few million. This is a gang-ridden zone where Latino youths are gunned down with tragic regularity.
Frances went to college, established herself as a professional woman, and married well (or so we think — more about that later in the play.) Now she has reluctantly returned to sort out the effects of her recently deceased grandmother, a visit that brings her into unwelcome contact with her estranged cousin, Gloria (Raquel Salinas), an activist dedicated to reviving her struggling community. We quickly learn that Frances, for all her cash and privilege, has a son spending life in prison, and that Gloria’s own son was shot dead at a family picnic.
Once best friends, these two women now have serious beef, but the exact reasons behind their feud remain frustratingly obscure, as do several other plot points in Haley’s well-intentioned but frequently puzzling play. For instance, comadre (godmother) Josephine (pleasingly perky Tina D’Marco) interjects welcome humor into the proceedings — but whose grandmother is she? And how did she factor into Frances and Gloria’s lives, specifically?
As far as we can ascertain, Frances’s son Armando is serving time because he picked up the murder weapon at the fatal family picnic and shot someone — apparently a 15-year-old boy, possibly a cousin — a rash action for which Frances bitterly blames Gloria’s dead son because he was “standing beside” Armando at the time of the tragedy. Why that blame? Who, exactly, died? And why, with all of Frances’s much-vaunted connections and money, is Armando serving a life sentence for shooting someone in white hot anger after his cousin and best friend was shot dead at his side?
Haley also tends to interrupt the narrative flow with author-in-dialogue asides — about how the 10 Freeway divided the Latino community, and how the prison system has been debased into a cash grab for the wealthy — a particularly intrusive rant since it occurs so shortly before the play ends.
Director Vilma Villela has assembled an engaging cast who create a convincing family dynamic within Marco De Leon’s realistic bedroom set. Herrera and Salinas glide over the inconsistencies of their material with panache, although one hopes that Salinas’s line hesitancies will smooth out during the run. Max Brother’s sound and Kevin Vasquez’s lighting are also first rate. However, a costume designer needs to be brought on board to rethink Herrera’s ensemble, which seems strangely frumpy for the supposedly fashion-forward, designer-conscious Gloria.
Yet despite its flaws, there’s a passionate activism at the core of Cousins that makes for worthy watching. One of the most moving moments occurs before the show, when audience members are asked to share names of those they have known who were lost to gang violence. At play’s end, those names are gathered, written on cards and hung on a bare-branched tree at the corner of the set. On only the second night of the run, that tree was sadly festooned — a sad testament to a sad reality, and a tribute to Haley’s crusading spirit, which infuses her imperfect but meaningful play with timeliness and purpose.
Casa 0101 Theater, 2102 East 1st Street, Boyle Heights. Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 3 pm; through May 21. tickets@casa0101.org or www.casa0101.org Running time: 90 minutes with an intermission.
