Jack Sharpe and Jade Santana in MARISOL at Echo Theatre (Photo – John Dlugolecki)
Folks in Pasadena and throughout the San Gabriel area may not yet be familiar with Atwater Village’s Open Fist and Echo Theatres, which in fact are a very short jaunt via the 134 and 2 Freeways. Those of us living nearby think the playhouses lift an already interesting neighborhood several artistic notches. The company’s actors, directors like Amanda Weier, and choices of fresh and thoughtful material stand out, even in a megalopolis full of small venues.
By Marilyn Fuss
The play *MARISOL*, written by Puerto Rican playwright José Rivera, is worthy of a good deal of attention, both in itself and as part of his career. He also created the screenplay for *THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES* in 2004, about Che Guevara. He co-wrote another screenplay for the film *ON THE ROAD* several years later. After the contemporary Off-Broadway play *MARISOL* was presented in 1992, Rivera’s next two plays were notable for their titles: *REFERENCES TO SALVADOR DALI MAKE ME HOT* and *ADORATION OF THE OLD WOMAN*. The phrase that keeps sticking to all of them in reviews is “magical realism.”
The show at Open Fist Theatre bears out that definition, as it also illustrates the words “surreal” and “dystopian,” the latter from before it became a term tripping off everyone’s tongue. It could stand as a period piece, reflecting the decade before the new millennium, when many reverted to a Year 1000 mindset, feeling there would somehow be cosmic harm in the flip of so many years at once. (There was also that worry, starting in the ’90s, that a society dependent on computers could be turned on its head if the right measures were not taken for the digits on computers to reliably turn to 1/1/2000—that is, Y2K.) That worldwide panic, of course, is analogous to 2026 fears about artificial intelligence, making *MARISOL* still more current even as it remains time-tested.
It’s surely a work of plausible horror, even prescient, being set in New York City, where, nine years later, two jumbo jets would fly through the Twin Towers, in a sense justifying the prevailing paranoia in the play. That paranoia did spread to the rest of the country and remains with us to this day, to our great misfortune. Excessive consumerism and pollution’s role in heating up the planet hadn’t yet been widely accepted, but people had an impending sense that we were using up Earth too hard and quickly. There are thus many reasons to heed the play’s situations and lessons, even the bitterly humorous ones resulting from human predictability and wickedness, illustrated aptly by Jack Sharpe at various moments.
Watching the stellar Jade Santana as Marisol Perez, the audience cannot possibly look away from her plight, starting with her subway confrontation with a golf-club-wielding street person, convincingly interpreted by Matthew Goodrich, through to an ultimate and necessary final message of hope through caring. We are not always sure whether Marisol herself is alive and awake, dreaming, or dead and reflecting on her life, but we stay with her. Used golf clubs are on a par, if you will, with guns in the play, appropriately: they can be seen as representing the cast-offs of the well-to-do, who also find themselves at risk in this climate of peril, personified by Barbara Lee Bragg, tragically comic at moments while lost in her decimated city, her privileged status no longer a help.
Though our protagonist starts out pious, there is evidence, in the failure of day-to-day bounty and kindness, of a general rumbling about a God who has been around for so many centuries that He is dwindling in His faculties, no longer omnipotent. This issue culminates in a personal way when Marisol’s guardian angel, portrayed with grace and expression by Taylor Scott, rebels from service, literally turning her wings over to her charge, with cautionary words.
Grace Soens, as the willfully sunny June, is intense, sometimes selfless in her loyalty, and thoroughly relatable in her friendships and meltdown. Hutchins Foster is the proverbial consummate actor, especially in the wildly surreal scene exposing his sun-ruined skin. Chima Rok creates a great image of frustration with an ice-cream cone. The other ensemble actors keep the transitions smooth and enhance the production just as they are needed. At least five of the cast members also played substantial roles in last year’s exceptionally original stage adaptation of Kafka’s *AMERIKA*. Open Fist is a genuine and professional company of strong performers and excellent directors, which we’re lucky to have right at hand.
MARISOL Through October 24 Location Atwater Village Theatre 3269 Casitas Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90039 Ample free parking in the Atwater Crossing lot and along Casitas Ave. Tickets at this link.
Chima Rok, Carmella Jenkins, Mara Michelle,
Jade Santana and Matthew Goodrich (Photo – John Dlugolecki)
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