STAGE REVIEW : Machismo Plucked Bare as ‘Roosters’ Takes Flight

A hard-kicking flyer is “the ultimate bird” in the world of cockfighting, we quickly learn in “Roosters” at Los Angeles Theatre Center.

“Roosters” is something of a hard-kicking flyer itself. Playwright Milcha Sanchez-Scott kicks machismo around the stage until it hasn’t a leg to stand on. Her play also flies, in the sense of ascending. Her language leaps from earthbound conversation into flights of poetic fantasy, and her imagery soars--literally so, at the end of the play, when a character levitates.

The style is “magic realism,” and Sanchez-Scott’s writing honors both of those words. Magically, roosters become human dancers, and spirits descend through mysterious lighting displays to speak with a teen-aged girl. Realistically, an aging whore offers cynical wisecracks that sometimes undercut the most poetic speeches, and the characters enact a parent-child drama that is not unlike the stories told in a hundred other plays.

It’s the story of a neglectful father (Pepe Serna), obsessed with his work, and the children who resent him. This particular father is so identified with his work, cockfighting, that his name is Gallo--Spanish for rooster. In case we don’t catch the analogy, Sanchez-Scott underlines it in other ways: speaking to a cock, Gallo says, “Papa’s got you now.” We also hear that fighting cocks kill their young.

The analogy would be heavy-handed, and the characters too starkly drawn, in a plain old realistic play. But here they seem more archetypal than stereotyped.

In a Times interview, Sanchez-Scott acknowledged that “these people in this play are mythical, archetypal characters.” The two women, for example, are “typical Latin role models--(the) mother (Evelina Fernandez) is the long-suffering madonna and (the) aunt (Lupe Ontiveros) is a whore.”

The children are somewhat more complex, especially 15-year-old Angela (Victoria Gallegos). She is intellectually precocious, socially slow (she hides under the porch and plays with dolls) and spiritually obsessed (her dolls are saints). She plans to escape her lot by praying for divine intervention.

Her 20-year-old brother, Hector (Fausto Bara), has more concrete plans to escape the drudgery of farm work. He has inherited a prize cock from his grandfather and plans to use its earnings to leave this valley, somewhere in the Southwest, and search for a better tomorrow. But when Papa comes home after seven years in prison, he covets the same cock. A father-son clash, replete with Oedipal echoes, is the result.

Director Jose Luis Valenzuela and an exceptional cast turn this familiar tale into quite a show. Sanchez-Scott wrote some blistering monologues for Hector, expressing his disgust at his present life and his hopes for a better one, and Bara runs with them. Fernandez shines in a scene in which she, too, begins to glimpse a ray of hope on the horizon.

As tough old Aunt Chata, Ontiveros is a hoot through most of the play, her jaw flapping, her flesh protruding anxiously from behind the kimono, slip and pink shoes provided by costumer Tina Navarro. But she doesn’t allow the bitterness to get lost in the laughter.

Gallegos has a fine time, juxtaposing Angela’s girlish fantasies with her dawning awareness of the world. And E. J. Castillo also gets some laughs as Hector’s naive friend Adan. When the opportunity arises, Adan is ready to stand in as Gallo’s substitute son, but he never seems like an opportunist.

Serna’s Gallo is the most problematic character. He doesn’t have the dimension that a great myth would require. He is a rat more than a rooster. While Serna brings a lot of animalistic energy to the role, he hasn’t figured out how to make a man out of this man.

But if you look at “Roosters” primarily as the children’s story, it offers moments of considerable power. The lighting design, a firestorm of desert colors and dramatic shadows, has a lot to do with this; it’s credited to Timian Alsaker and Douglas D. Smith. Alsaker also created the set, which looks so Sam Shepardian that LATC could save money by doing “Roosters” in repertory with, say, “Curse of the Starving Class.”

The design raises questions at the end of the play. Angela’s levitation isn’t like Mary Martin in “Peter Pan”; she stands on a clearly visible platform which rises from the stage. Was this a mistake, or was it intended? If intended, what was the intent? It’s a question that should be asked at one of those post-show symposiums.

The opening-night performance of “Roosters” Friday was dedicated to playwright Miguel Pinero, who died early Friday. Director Luis Valdez delivered a eulogy before the play.

Plays Tuesdays through Sundays at 8 p.m., with matinees Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. Closes Aug. 7. Tickets: $22-$25. 514 S. Spring St.; (213) 627-5599.

‘ROOSTERS’

By Milcha Sanchez-Scott. Directed by Jose Luis Valenzuela. Set/lighting by Timian Alsaker and Douglas D. Smith. Costumes by Tina Navarro. Sound by Mark Friedman and Jon Gottlieb. Choreography by Wade Collings. Stage managed by John Gallo. With Frederic Anthony, Fausto Bara, E. J. Castillo, Vernon David, Evelina Fernandez, Victoria Gallegos, Lupe Ontiveros, Pepe Serna.