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Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles
Reviewed by Myron Meisel
Getty Villa
Through October 3
RECOMMENDED:
In Luis Alfaro’s new adaptation, Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles, Medea (Sabina Zuniga Varela), an undocumented fugitive and a topnotch seamstress obsessively doing piecework while never leaving her home, explains that the basis for the quality of a well-crafted dress depends upon the fabric “… and the stitching.”
Alfaro’s classic fabric is sourced from Euripides, and his innovative stitching transports the Greek tragedy into contemporary Boyle Heights, just as the original playwright had created a dramatic elaboration of a more ancient myth. Alfaro has not only created perhaps the most accessible adaptation of the notoriously abhorrent shocker, he has certainly conjured up the funniest. This represents true populist theater intended to appeal an audience far broader than the art crowd, and while the situations and characterizations deftly traffic in familiar archetypes, they nevertheless still morph inexorably to the maltreated woman’s inescapably furious and climactic revenge.
The Getty Villa’s annual foray into a full production in an amphitheater redolent of antiquity is this time intended to feel utterly contemporary. And Alfaro’s deployment of savvy insider-Los Angeles references score well with the crowd, though some of the touches are subtle: Michocanas are perhaps the most scattered of the Mexican diaspora, unconcentrated in singular neighborhoods, which only emphasizes Medea’s utter isolation from the life outside, as well as providing her protection from deeply dreaded notice.
Her opportunistic husband Hason is played by Justin Huen, who like all the other principals in the cast, is a well-versed veteran of past Alfaro Hellenic reconfigurations like Electricidad and Oedipo El Rey. Rapaciously eager to assimulate, Hasan expresses his masculinity not least by his facility to so compartmentalize his feelings that he can sincerely profess his devotion to Medea even as he and their doted-upon son thoroughly betray her in every imaginable way.
Indeed, in the omnipresent desperation for money, most of the drama until the denouement feels far more like a modern counterpart of Clifford Odets than Euripides, and Huen’s evocation of an otherly ethnic John Garfield only reinforces that impression. Alfaro also invokes the horror of border crossing in pointed contrast to the heroics of Jason and the Argonauts, incisively eliciting awareness of the tragedy (and more crucially ignored, the traumas) of all displaced persons, however variable their motives or their adaption to life in a new and often puzzling society.
Most of the burden of emotional persuasion falls, as it inevitably must, upon Zuniga Varela’s Medea, implausibly too gorgeous for the role of a propertied papa’s favorite relegated by her sex to economic and connubial servitude. It’s tricky to conceive the Greek sorceress as an ultra-traditional doormat and still credibly render her transformation into the Fury for all wrongs wrought upon women. Zuniga Varela cannot avail herself of the gravitas of the Medea tradition of Judith Anderson, Irene Papas or Zoe Caldwell, yet invests the role with enough innate integrity in the face of injustice that when overwhelmed by the enormity of her Fate, she navigates the transition with a more delicate hand, debased into horrid transcendence apparently more internal than brazen.
Nevertheless, the shambling, sheer populism of Alfaro’s approach mutes the cathartic power, although his folkloric delineation of honor gives the bulk of the action more weight even as his pleasing lightness seduces both characters and audience with a fleeting illusion that possibilities for these undocumented strivers might indeed prove limitless.
And when it comes to quality stitching, this Theatre @ Boston Court production comes blessed with the lapidary talents, so suitable to a site like the Getty Villa, of director Jessica Kubzansky and an indelible supporting cast of contrasting females — from the indigenous power of Medea’s lifelong maid (played by a commanding Vivis Colombetti) to the ingenuous ambition of an empathetic street vendor (Zilah Mendoza) to the ruthless avarice of manipulative entrepreneur Armida (Marlene Forte). Lighting and sound often present challenges to finesse in this space, but Ben Zamora and Raquel Barreto consistently achieve supple effects. Using the Getty’s available museum façade, Kubzansky even concocts a Mexican correlative for Euripedes’s rarely staged spectacle of Medea’s escape in a dragon chariot courtesy of grandfather Helios.
Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles, Getty Villa, 17985 Pacific Coast Hwy, Pacific Palisades, Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; through October 3. (310) 440-7300, getty.edu. Running time: one hour, 30 minutes.
