Jack Sharpe, Grace Soens and Jade Santana (Photo by John Dlugolecki)
Reviewed by Amanda L. Andrei
Open Fist Theatre Company
Through October 24th
RECOMMENDED
Jade Santana and Hutchins Foster (Photo by John Dlugolecki)
The moon disappeared nine months ago, a man gives birth on the streets of New York City, an angel cuts off her wings before battling God, and somehow, these are not the strangest things happening in Marisol.
Penned by José Rivera, Marisol first premiered in 1992 at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, Kentucky (which discontinued in 2021). Open Fist’s revival of this fantastical apocalyptic drama provides a sorely needed balm for today’s increasingly unhinged world.
Although the original play is set during a New York City winter in the “present,” director Amanda Weier wisely keeps to its ‘90s roots amidst the surrealism, which imparts the impression of a time capsule or recurrent dream. In a world of corded phones, paper tabloids, rosaries draped on fire hydrants, and anxiety for the impending millennium, young copy editor Marisol (Jade Santana) lives in the Bronx and commutes to Manhattan—until one night, after a mysterious assault on the subway—she is visited by an angel (Taylor Scott) on a mission to assassinate a senile and dying God.
Santana makes a marvelous heroine, navigating horror and humor as she descends through the heavenly fallout and increasing hellish boroughs like a contemporary Nuyorican Inanna. The production gains momentum with the appearance of co-worker June (Grace Soens), who suddenly invites Marisol to live with her, and Lenny (Jack Sharpe), the latter’s neurotic and obsessive brother who has created a voodoo-esque sculpture of Marisol (excellent creepy props by Bruce Dickinson and Anna Krause). Other standout performances include Hutchins Foster as Man with Scar Tissue (provoking audible winces as he unfurls a bandage) and Chima Rok as Man with Ice Cream (drawing astonished laughter as he weaponizes his tasty frozen dessert). Their commitment to their deranged circumstances highlights Marisol’s fortitude to survive, as well as building a strange kind of intimacy and sense of time.
This quickening of intimacy and tempo are what make Marisol feel coherent despite its strangeness. While it may be tempting to describe it as episodic as or a work of magical realism (a label that Rivera himself pushed against), the play ultimately unfolds through dream logic. And in a dream — one might also argue, a prophecy — fragments feel cohesive because they are deep symbols that gain unity through repetition and the dreamer’s interpretation. Marisol is a collective dream, and Open Fist invites us to interpret it together.
Though there are a few uneven spots (sometimes the thunderous volume of the delivered lines swallows up the playwright’s lyricism), Weier’s direction and the actors’ intense commitment to this fractured reality create not only cohesiveness, but true warmth and pathos amidst the chaos.
“A lot of things that can’t happen are happening,” a Woman with Furs (Barbara Lee Bragg) tells Marisol. With chaos as the crux of the world today, Marisol holds fast to the true meaning of apokalypsis — not destruction, but instead an unveiling, a revelation. The play offers hints of how we might survive and what awaits on the other side: The young woman at the heart of the story knows when to fight and when to flee. She keeps her faith. She trusts her instincts. Even as the old world incomprehensibly shatters, she continues to bear witness to the new light ahead.
Open Fist Theatre Company, Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., Atwater. Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 4 pm, Mon., Oct. 5, 8 pm; thru Oct. 24. www.openfist.org. Running time: 100 minutes with one intermission.
