STAGE REVIEW : Too Many Pens Spoil ‘Stone Wedding’ Stew

Magic realism has become, for now at least, a fact of Latino theater. It has every fascination going for it: ritual, fantasy, myth and reality.

That may be the reason why “Stone Wedding,” which opened over the weekend downtown at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, feels like a baker’s dozen when it comes to theatrical ploys. It has angry Aztec gods, a profane priest, intimations of incest, interwoven mythology, love, death, possession and the Korean War.

Such an eclectic mix of elements presents its problems, yet one must hasten to add that it also has humor, snappy dialogue, some fine performances and some arresting, painterly sets by Gronk suggestively lit by Margaret Anne Dunne.

The play is a collaborative project developed over a year’s time by the cast (all members of the center’s Latino Theatre Lab) with playwright Milcha Sanchez-Scott. Writer and actors have asked a lot of questions except one crucial one: What is this play ultimately going to be about? Right now, it’s an abundance of riches that hasn’t coalesced into a single piece.

“Stone Wedding” opens in some Korean War combat zone, where Daniel Montoya (E. J. Castillo) is undergoing emergency brain surgery after being wounded in battle. Catholic Sister Mary Katherine (Susan Powell) is tending to his physical needs and praying for his soul, while over the rooftop, the angry Aztec God of War, Blood and Sacrifice, Huitzilopochtli (Marcos Loya), is vying for that soul.

It’s a stark and startling image. The field hospital has the outline of an Aztec pyramid. And Daniel leaves his body to climb that pyramid and be received by the god. He has not died. The sister’s ministrations have kept him alive, but the god has claimed his spirit. Subsequent scenes find Daniel a mental wreck in a wheelchair--the perfect shell for Huitzilopochtli to inhabit and command.

This is one strand of the story. Another develops at the funeral of Daniel’s brother, Bobby, killed when he tries to save his sibling. Bobby’s fiancee, the beautiful Tree (Evelina Fernandez); her mother, Yvonne (Lupe Ontiveros); and her younger sister, Lorenza (Angela Moya), pay their respects at Bobby’s funeral. But Yvonne is annoyed at having been summarily cheated out of the Montoya fortune. She hatches a plan.

That is the second strand. Mixed into this tale of vengeful gods and greedy parents are other characters and more subthemes. The local priest, Father Stephan (Julio Medina), presiding at Bobby’s funeral, has taken the idea of being a father to his flock too literally and too far. He is attended by Jr. (the excellent Valente “Bill” Rodriguez), a slightly skewed choir boy who talks with his dead twin by looking into a mirror. And finally there’s Pete (Marco Rodriguez), son of the town prostitute, La Pera, who moves like a wild dog, stealthily in and across these lives.

Playwright Sanchez-Scott weaves these vivid characters into an unwieldy story of love, redemption and poetic justice that does not bear close scrutiny without falling through the large unfilled cracks between ritual and reality.

Without giving away the plot’s twists and turns, it’s worth noting that two characters and one voice are entirely dispensable. The play could go on without Jr. and his twin, losing texture (they’re marvelously entertaining) but not momentum. The same goes for the more crudely drawn Lorenza, whose contributions are paler.

This is no comment on the actors, who do the best they can with the material. Valente Rodriguez’s Jr. is unflappable, making clear differentiations between him and his hilarious brother. Moya’s Lorenza is forced, but the fault lies in the writing, which is unpersuasive. Castillo is a solid Daniel, as much in his emotional recollections of war as in his mindless twitchings in the wheel-chair, or in his imperiousness as Huitzilopochtli’s minion.

Ontiveros plays mama Yvonne for everything she’s got, but the character is the usual comic bundle of righteous unpredictability. And if the apoplectic Medina could control his bluster as the raunchy Father Stephan, he might double his effect.

Fernandez is a passive beauty as the majestic Tree and Marco Rodriguez’s Pete benefits more from his hungry, hollow-cheeked look than from his lines, but there is real heat in their romantic exchanges. Their ultimate fate, however, and the imagination with which it is revealed to us, are the high points of this otherwise muddled production.

Playwriting by committee rarely works, even in the Latino theater, which has a history of collectivism. It’s time to set aside the derivations and move on. Jose Luis Valenzuela directed.

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