|
San Francisco Chronicle
Tuesday, October 29, 2002
Latino history dances, frolics in '7 Visions'
Dia de los Muertos shadow play at Brava
Robert Hurwitt, Chronicle Theater Critic
Shadows don't fall quietly across the stage in "The 7 Visions of Encarnacion" at the Brava Theater Center. The shadows dance. They sing. They chase, court, interrogate, kiss and reprimand. Shadow people, buildings and entire landscapes merge or even metamorphose into each other.
A Dia de los Muertos concoction by playwright Octavio Solis, shadow master Larry Reed, composer Richard Marriott and other artists, "7 Visions" is a beguiling visual feast wrapped around a celebration of Latino identity -- and, by extension, the intermingling of ethnicities that make up America. Produced by Reed's ShadowLight company, it's the kind of charming, inventive show that, with a little work, could well become an annual holiday enchantment.
In a vivid demonstration of the astonishing fertility of the local arts scene, "7 Visions" was one of three new plays that opened Friday, and one of five world premieres within four days by playwrights of national standing: Solis, Philip Kan Gotanda's "The Wind Cries Mary," Michelle Carter's "Ted Kaczynski Killed People With Bombs" (both reviewed Monday), Mart Crowley's "The Men From the Boys" and Naomi Iizuka's "17 reasons (why)" (to be reviewed Wednesday).
Solis' contribution is a gentle fable of La Raza origins in the intermixture of American Indians and Europeans back when San Francisco was a mission called Dolores. It's a tale of shadowy people trying to peer through a shadowy past. As such, it carries forward Solis' perpetual investigation of Latino identity (as in "Santos y Santos," "El Paso Blue," "Dreamlandia") in a manner tailor-made for Reed's unique form of shadow theater.
The action takes place on a large screen stretched across the proscenium, enacted by human performers in intricate cut-out masks and small and large shadow puppets of people, animals and grinning skeletons. Working with visual artist Victor Cartagena, Reed creates wondrously simple illusions of a modern cityscape melting into its primal rolling hills, objects glimpsed in rear-view mirrors and cinematic pans through rows of arches into interior halls or a confession booth.
The shadows are as sharp-edged as silhouettes or as soft as distant foliage. Flashes of yellow and red accent the rich variety of grays. The dominant Dia de los Muertos motif is enriched with clever uses of images from ancient rock paintings. Reed wields his shadow-artistry in "7 Visions" with what seem to be new levels of depth and dimension.
Partly narrated -- in song and story -- by the skeletal Calaca (the gleefully suggestive voice of Carlos Baron), "7 Visions" is the identity quest of the aptly named Encarnacion (an engagingly earnest Luis Cortes). A foundling, he's been raised at the mission by the sternly reverent Fra Lucero (Baron) to believe he's Spanish, better than the indios and destined for the priesthood. The truth of his origins is more complicated, as we figure out well before he works it out with considerable help from the irresistible, rebellious Indian maiden Carolina (a magnetic Tania Lisa Llambelis).
It's a story of personal and cultural discovery, of cruelties and reconciliation, exploitation, smallpox and visions cued by whirling wisps of loteria cards. Solis writes with crisp economy and gentle, pun-inflected humor, as when the skeletal Calaca ("Think of me as an encarnacion without the carne") tells the hero he has to choose "between the friar who loves you or the lover who fries you."
It's also richly musical, half-told through Marriott's delightfully upbeat, mournful, whimsical and wistful corridos as performed by Cascada de Flores (Jorge Liceaga on guitar and the beautiful voices of Arwen Lawrence de Castellanos and Sabra Weber). Apart from one preachy number celebrating the bounties of Mother Earth, the songs are the heart-pumping joy and emotional depth of the show.
It could still be better. There are slow passages in the script, and Solis gets a bit didactic toward the end. Some of the actors' voices don't match well with the minor characters and, except for Baron, none sings well enough to hold the stage with Castellanos and Weber. The general level of Reed's shadow artistry is so high that occasional lapses -- characters who seem out of sync, mouths that don't move -- become more bothersome. But "7 Visions" is mostly magical, never more so than at the end when the curtain rises to reveal the mere humans and cutout figures that created an hour of beguiling illusion.
|
|
