The Play You Want
Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
The Road Theatre Company
Through April 17
Recommended
In Bernardo Cubría’s The Play You Want, directed by Michael John Garcés, Bernardo (Peter Pasco), the central character, is a Mexican-American playwright who writes experimental plays about clowns, whom he views as universal symbols of humanity. Little would please Bernardo more than to be acclaimed as the new Latino Samuel Beckett. But there’s a problem — his plays are poorly received by White producers who don’t find them ethnic enough to suit their notion of what a Latinx play should be. When his acidic-tongued literary agent (Natalie Llerena) demands that the playwright pen something more in line with Establishment cliches, the furious Bernardo spits out a ludicrous story: a Mexican American family “haunted by Narcos on Day of the Dead, but the whole thing is a magical realism allegory for the Trump Presidency, and like a family play about DACA.”
To Bernardo’s stunned amazement, his agent immediately pitches the idea to Manhattan’s prestigious Public Theater — and they immediately go for it. Protesting that he’s averse to writing anything of that ilk, he’s soon persuaded otherwise by the agent, who threatens not only to drop him if he fails, but to make sure that no one else ever represents him again. There’s also his family to consider — his wife Vera (Chelsea Gonzalez) is getting fed up with not making the rent on time, and pre-school fees for their two-year-old Pablo are likely to run $20,000 per annum.
So Bernardo complies. From that point on, his career begins to accelerate, eventually to hitherto unimaginable heights. An array of celebrated showbiz icons at one point or another become attached to his breakthrough project: theater artist Gilbert Cruz, movie star J’Lo, stage and screen actor Alfred Molina, director Chay Yew, producer Scott Rudin. Each step upward, however, presents Bernardo with one more Faustian conundrum to resolve, one more compromise to eat away at his integrity, one more personal humiliation bestowed by people having more power than he.
Strewn with the magical realism that its protagonist, Bernardo, disdains, The Play You Want is smart, savvy, ironic satire, birthed, according to his interview in Broadway World, from Cubría’s own frustration as a playwright. As Bernardo, Pasco isn’t initially sympathetic; he’s bitter, a little too whiny, ungenerous with his peers and drinks far too much; the seeds of the possible dissolution of his marriage are clear. But it’s precisely the coarse complex texture of the character that boosts the bridge between the hyperbole of the play’s plotline and the real world it so savagely — and justifiably — critiques. The historic struggle of Latino artists for dignity and recognition is landscaped for us with acerbic laughs and lapidarian wit.
Under Garcés’s direction, the ensemble is razor-sharp. At the top of the list are John Nichols as Cruz and Molina, and Llerena as Bernardo’s agent; both deliver comic gold. Roland Ruiz as Lin Manuel Miranda (whom Bernardo initially scorns) and John Leguizamo is splendidly smug or sly, depending on the moment. Gonzalez brings solidity, warmth and a compelling authenticity to the vexed Vera, who must watch the man she loves metamorphose into a stranger; she’s also spot-on when appearing as a production assistant, a chilly cog in the entertainment machine. Stewart J. Zully as Rudin defines the arrogance of a producer’s power. Christopher Larkin, relatively understated as Chay Yew and Yew’s Caucasian replacement, Sam Gold, is no less on the mark as one of the players in the “game.” As the abuela, whose wry arresting monologue about tamales and dodging vigilantes at the border opens the play, Presciliana Esparolini augurs the burlesque nature of the entertainment to come.
Brian Graves’ scenic design, with its mud-colored moveable backdrops, is serviceable; it’s the sound design by Marc Antonio Pritchet that imparts real color and dynamic to the story. Derrick McDaniels’s lighting design is a bit uniformly dim, I thought. On the other hand, Michele Young’s costumes and wigs serve in each case as a notable embellishment.
The Road Theatre Company, The Road on Magnolia, 10747 Magnolia Blvd., N. Hollywood. Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 4 pm; thru April 17. Running time, 95 minutes without intermission. www.RoadTheatre.org
