Mariela in the Desert

Reviewed by Gray Palmer
Angel City Ensemble at Casa 0101 Theater
Through December 11

If Angel City Ensemble intends to build a centrist-liberal, middle-class subscription base, then Mariela in the Desert, by Karen Zacarías, is a good choice for their inaugural production. Zacarías was the first resident playwright at Arena Stage. She is the author of many musicals for young audiences, and is known for Chasing George Washington, a fantasy about children visiting the White House. (That play answers the question, “What is it like to live in the White House?” and its storybook adaptation has a foreword by Michelle Obama).

In Zacarías’s work, as you might imagine, there are few formal surprises. Mariela never departs from naturalistic style — though it’s varied by the hop-scotch of flashback, by diary-like monologues to introduce supporting characters, and the theatrical conceit of children played by adult actors (dangerously close to kitsch). There’s lots of room for naturalistic acting — it has the sort of material that most actors love — with roles for three generations of women. The story features well-turned revelations of family secrets, bitter-sweet feelings, and a touching conclusion.

There’s a lot of talk about art, talent, and an art hoax, but really the play is a fable about the subjugation of women.

Mariela in the Desert takes place north of Mexico City in 1951, during the last days of home-hospice care for a painter, the imperious José Salvatierra (Vance Valencia). José is a tough case. He hates doctors and hospitals. He suffers from the terminal complications of diabetes: visual impairment, cardiovascular disease, neuropathy — his foot ulcerations have led to minor amputation. He is not going gently into that good night. When we meet him during a sponge bath, he demands to be served flan.

He is abusive. “I should have been castrated the day I laid eyes on you!” he says to his much younger wife, Mariela (Rachel Gonzalez), whom he has isolated for more than a decade in their Chihuahuan Desert retreat. Their love is hard to distinguish from hatred.

Their son is dead. And their daughter, Blanca (Vannessa Vasquez), has been avoiding them for two years. As the story begins, Mariela has sent a telegram to bring their daughter home. “Do you think she’ll come this time?” asks José.

But it hasn’t always been like this. When Mariela remembers their life before moving to the desert, she thinks of a party at their house in Mexico City. (Their guest list is literally a name-check for a museum Big Box show: Rivera/Kahlo, Siqueiros, and Tamayo with a guitar. Also present is “that skinny American photographer,” Edward Weston, with movie-star girlfriend Modotti. Of the muralismo mexicano big three, Orozco must have had a previous engagement.)

At this point in the play, it became difficult to take Zacarías’s story seriously. It’s a little strange that we hear the character José Salvatierra warmly endorse Diego’s denunciation of Mexico City as bourgeois and then hear him immediately express not merely apolitical but anti-political opinions about Diego’s pictures (“… this angry new ‘movement’ is just artists farting in the face of God…”). Should any of the real-life artists have overheard José’s talk about painting here, they would have written him off as a jackass. Rivera and Siqueiros are unthinkable without Marxist commitments: To these men, art was a weapon in the class-war.

This is a completely de-politicized, unhistorical picture of art-making. The play instead emphasizes the artists’ gender relations — yes, a different politics. Of course there’s no contradiction in an account of patriarchal repression among these men, but with Zacarías, you might think that revolutionary politics is a decorative quirk. (The play was developed behind the Orange Curtain at South Coast Rep.)

Further, when daughter Blanca does show up, she brings her boyfriend, Adam (the outstanding Randy Vasquez), a professor of art history. His private conversation with Mariela — one of the great delights of the show — has him, in amusing conservative style, denigrating abstract expressionism: “Pollack is not abstract, he is random. His work is non-political, impersonal, safe… What do I learn about Pollack when I look at his work? Nothing.” As opposed to the work of Frida, who makes the statement, “This is what it’s like to love a man more than he loves you.”

Well, that’s the line the story takes, and on its own terms, it does quite well. The story involves doubt about the authenticity of Salvatierra’s most-admired work, the visit of a ghost, the freedom required for creative work, and the vexing problem of its recognition.

Rachel Gonzalez, in the title part, quietly, patiently endures the abuse, mysteriously warns her daughter about the burden of talent, crosses the border between past and present, all with great restraint, toward a very moving denouement.

Selma James was writing her revolutionary column in Correspondence at this time, material which would become her 1952 book, A Woman’s Place. We can hope that daughter Blanca found a Spanish translation.

The cast includes Denise Blasor as José’s sister, and Kenneth Lopez (seen recently to great effect in A Mexican Trilogy with the Latino Theater Company) in the challenging role of the Salvatierra’s dead boy. The great actor Robert Beltran (also unforgettable in A Mexican Trilogy) directs.

There is fine work by the entire design team: Marco De Leon (scenic), Kevin Vasquez (lighting), Vincent Sanchez (sound), Yee Euh Nam (projection), Abel Alvarado (costume), and Alexander Cooper (props).

Casa 0101 Theater Main Stage, 2102 E. First St., Boyle Heights; Fri.-Sat. 8 p.m.; Sun., 5 p.m.; through December 11 (no performances Thanksgiving weekend). (323) 263-7684 https://casa0101.org . Running time: two hours 30 minutes with intermission.