Ogie Zulueta and Juan Amador (Photo by Jay Yamada)
Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Los Angeles Theatre Center
Through October 15
RECOMMENDED
Luis Alfaro’s post-pandemic play The Travelers, takes place in a fictional monastery in Grangeville, California, some ten or 12 miles west of Route 99 along a desolate streak of the Central Valley.
Grangeville hasn’t many inhabitants (468 according to the last census ) making it apropos, in theory, as a nesting place for a Carthusian order of monks whose basic tenets (again, theoretically speaking) are solitude and silence. Founded in 1084 by Bruno of Cologne, the Order has survived worldwide, their Latin motto, Stat crux dum volvitur, translated as “The Cross is steady while the world turns.”
This particular community, however, is not flourishing. A number of the older, more committed devotees has died off. Two have abandoned their vows and eloped as a pair to settle in Key West. More seriously, the remaining collective has fallen into disfavor with the local archdiocese, which has been cutting their budget to the point where food, if not yet scarce, has become less available and abundant.
So when an ostensibly dying man (Juan Manuel Amador), with a gunshot wound to the chest, collapses on their doorstep, feelings are mixed. Brother Santo (San José), who’s resided there the longest and is more or less in charge, believes the intruder’s appearance is an act of God and he’s unequivocal about nursing him back to health. The others are not so sure. Brother Daniel (Daniel Duque-Estrada) points out they can barely take care of themselves. Brother Yiyo (Guillermo Yiyo Ornelas) a timid sort, worries whether they will have enough food. The highly vocal and belligerent Brother Nancho (Kinan Valdez) suggests the smelly stranger may be dangerous and suggests they drop him off, stat, at the nearest Urgent Care.
Before a decision is reached, the wounded man regains consciousness and, after some painful writhing and a testy chat with Brother Santo, commits to staying for a while. He assumes the name of Brother Juan.
Shortly thereafter, Brother Juan discovers something bizarre when he goes to relieve himself — there is yet another monk, Brother Ogie (Ogie Zulueta) living in the bathtub in the monastery’s only bathroom. Brother Ogie claims that his legs are too weak to allow him to maneuver himself up and out, and walk away.
Directed by Sean San José, based on original direction by Catherine Castellanos at San Francisco’s Magic Theatre, The Travelers is at once farcical and profound, bitterly funny yet terribly sad. Spiritually yearning yet intensely of this earth, Alfaro’s brilliant take on the human condition filters through this motley crew of lost men, flawed in a variety of ways yet all compelled to search for their place in the universe, their special connection with God.
In an accomplished ensemble, Amador and Valdez are standouts in their depiction of the most volatile and forthcoming characters, with Amador’s enquiring Juan serving as our conduit into the monks’ strange interior world and Valdez’s Brother Nancho enormously relatable as a temperamentally might-have-been gang member who opts instead to shelter inside the Church. Zulueta is absolutely winning as the innocent within the group who evolves from the tolerated guy in the bathtub to the conveyor of divine forgiveness.
Tanya Orellana’s striking scenic design — mounds of soil decked with votive candles and an assemblage of decrepit unvarnished chandeliers suspended above them — serves as flawless visual counterpart for the dichotomy inherent in each character’s being. Joan Osato’s fabulous projections —images of stalking animals in the wild and bawling naked human newborns, among others — convey the scopic nature of the playwright’s perspective, one that surrounds and dwarfs the tides of men.
The Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring Street, downtown LA. Thurs.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 4 pm; thru Oct. 15. https://latinotheaterco.org Running time: approximately 80 minutes with no intermission.
