Sparkles & the Black Weeping Woman

Reviewed by Neal Weaver
McCadden Place Theatre
Closed

Sparkles (Barkley Romero) is a 17-year-old Latina who lives with her mother, Lisa (Lena Marie), in a Highland Park house which tends to slide downhill whenever they miss a mortgage payment. (This is magic realism with a vengeance!) Sparkles is being pressured, by both Lisa and her own conscience, to marry rich-boy Sang (Kevin Young), in order to help her mother financially. Sang is the scion of the rich, ruthless and predatory Sun family. He relentlessly presses Sparkle to marry him, promising to keep her safe — perhaps from life itself.

It’s clear from the start that Sang is over-possessive, insensitive and persistent. Everything in Sparkles’ nature is telling her not to marry him, but she remains undecided. She consults with a mysterious woman, La Llorona (Michelle Castillo), who is the Black Weeping Woman — a figure from Mexican folklore and mythology, perpetually grieving for her lost children.  But somehow she is also Cuca, a Colombian revolutionary who’s battling to save her children who have fallen into the clutches of the Sun family. And she apparently also had a love affair with Sang’s father, who has never forgiven her for dumping him. Sang has sworn vengeance against her. And then there’s Tio Jose Angel (Jaime Aymerich), Lisa’s brother, who is also Sparkles’ swaggering winged guardian angel.

When Sparkles, despite all the warning signs, decides to marry Sang, the stage is set for disaster, and it’s not long in coming.

The play, by writer-director Alicia Madrid, is rather like an ultra-rich fruitcake with the cake left out. It’s full of powerful images, intriguing characters, and volatile situations, but the cake, in the form of the dramaturgical savvy that should bind all the elements together, has gone missing. We’re treated to an extremely complicated plot, but the complex backstory is fed to us in dribs and drabs, and it’s up to us to put them together — which this writer is not always able to do. (Someone called Luna has been killed, apparently by the Suns, who are described as capitalist assassins, and buried on a hill. But I’m still uncertain who Luna was, or how she fits into the story.)

Madrid is militantly feminist, and reminds us several times that men do not own women. And she is sometimes quite eloquent. But toward the end it becomes impossible to follow her plot. And as director she does little to clarify matters. All too often, her scenes end weakly.

As Sparkles, Romero is a sympathetic figure, despite the fact that she’s marooned in a morass of indecision throughout the first act. As Sang, Young at first seems to be just a lovestruck doofus, but later he becomes a dangerous fanatic. Perhaps the most interesting performance is delivered by Castillo as Llorona/Cuca, though she seems to be stranded somewhere between myth and everyday reality. Aymerich provides a stylish turn as the winged angel, perpetually grooming his feathers.  And Lena Marie is effective as Sparkles’ well-meaning poet mother.

McCadden Place Theatre, 1157 N. McCadden Place, Hollywood. Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m., Sun., 3 p.m.; (800) 838-3006 or www.sparkles.brownpapertickets.com. Running time: two hours and 30 minutes with one 10-minute intermission.