The Hall of Final Ruin
Reviewed by Steven Leigh Morris
Ophelia’s Jump
Through April 10
Recommended:
Why do a play set in 1846 Santa Fe as the first Americano settlers were arriving in what was still Mexico?
At first glance, Kelly McBurnette-Andronicos’s historical drama-fantasia seems a scholarly exercise with a dash of feminism thrown in — all six characters are female. To show how Mexican women (and one Pueblo Indian, pleasingly rendered by Jennifer Bobiwash) were at a far remove from the gender subservience of 19thcentury American women, an insight the program alludes to? Yes, the characters are indeed a feisty crew, but so what?
The play, and Beatrice Casagran’s staging of it, is larger than a local history museum exhibit, and larger than the domestic drama that comprises most of the action. (There’s a splash of magic realism thrown in.) This is the story of “La Tules,” aka Doña Maria Gertrudis Barceló (Candida Celaya, entirely persuasive in the role) – a legendary character, wealthy, infamous, and ultimately benevolent. She ran a block of buildings, a casino known as Burro Alley, where she fleeced customers through Monte card games. (This is all in the play.) La Tules was the Steve Wynn of 19th century Santa Fe. But, as the saying goes, she “gave back to the community.”
Why? Who needs a moral compass on the frontier? And this is where things get interesting. La Tules is visited by an angel of death, Doña Sebastiana (Janette Valenzo), who passes through the adobe/wood-beam home (set by Casagran) like a vision, pulling her “death cart” intended to carry souls to purgatory — each time in a different costume. She’s a joker who taunts the audience in the cadence of a Chicano vato. In one scene she’s fully attired in a zoot suit, appearing in 1846 Santa Fe in a costume from 1946 Los Angeles (costumes by Ariel Thomke). That’s part of the magical realism. She’s as timeless as death itself.
And here’s where this sliver from a tiny corner of Mexican/American history expands backwards into something like the 16th century medieval morality play Everyman, whose title character is an allegorical stand-in for you and me. As in Everyman, each of Andronico’s characters emerges as a quality as much as a character. La Tule has two adopted daughters, Rallitos (Cynthia Sophia Alvarez) – the embodiment of “hope” —and Carmelita (a particularly robust performance by Brissa Ramirez), a distilled essence of fierce intelligence and ambition.
The theology of Andronicos’s play stems from the Franciscan monks who traversed the American continent, flagellating themselves to Heaven. Though the author of Everyman is unknown, it’s believed to be a Belgian monk who wished to remain anonymous. The character of Death in Everyman advises the title character to gather witnesses to testify before St. Peter on how he lived his life, and hence where he should land after purgatory. As a figure of Death, Doña Sebastiana is kinder, permitting her victim time to rectify her “accounts” and ensure a more comfy destination. This is what motivates La Tule’s redemption. In both plays, only Good Deeds can accompany a soul to Heaven.
An American trickster (Toni Lynd, endearing), who masquerades as a missionary, becomes an object of La Tula’s redemption, raising the question of how we should behave as our lives and our empires decline. The American pioneers were as land-grabby as land-grabbers anywhere on our ever-shrinking, ever-more-fragile planet. They were not alone in their zealous, holy rationalizations for driving the then-occupants of this continent, and others, out of their homes and into exile. Andronico’s play is a far cry from topical, but the horrors of Ukraine drive home the same question that reside in The Hall of Final Ruin. What is “moral” when ethics are so hard to find in the world?
The play comes laden with expository dialogue, which makes it feel longer than it should. And though it may conjure an antique photograph, that snapshot nonetheless captures our century, too.
Ophelia’s Jump, 2009 Porterfield Way, Suite I, Upland; Fri.-Sat., 8 pm; Sun., 4 p.m.; thru April 10; opheliasjump.org. Two and a half hours with one intermission.
