‘Divinas Palabras’: A Play for the People

“The title refers to the words that were said by Jesus Christ in defense of the prostitute Mary Magdalene,” said Mexican director Xavier Rojas about Ramon del Valle-Inclan’s 19-character drama, “Divinas Palabras” (“Divine Words”). The play will be the first entry of Bilingual Foundation of the Arts’ 1989-90 season and will be presented in Spanish and English on alternating nights.

“It is a play that (attempts) to break up political and moral norms,” Rojas added, speaking through a translator. “It dares to criticize the Spanish Crown.”

The story, set in a poor village in the 1920s, focuses on a church sexton and his adulterous wife--and her overzealous struggle with her sisters-in-law for control of the village’s child idiot, a “little monster” whose begging brings in consistently high revenues.

“When it was written (in 1920, the playwright) suggested that Spain should be a republic, that the people should elect their rulers, have their will made through them,” Rojas explained. “This is a story about the village people, the beggars, the forgotten. All of their morals and aspirations have been broken because they’re so ignorant. And the ignorance makes them believe in superstition, rather than believe in true faith.

“It’s set in Spain, but it could happen in Beirut, Mexico--anywhere there is a culture of popular religion,” the director continued.

For Rojas (who’s directing both the Spanish- and English-language versions of the play) the staging represents an opportunity to acquaint American audiences with the relatively unknown Spanish writer. And he believes that his own non-fluency in English hasn’t hampered the work.

“I know the play in Spanish very well, and I’ve read it in English,” Rojas stressed. When working with the English-speaking cast, “I follow the movement I’ve suggested for the actors. Still, there are great difficulties, adjustments to be made. Some of the actors are very different (from cast to cast), so I have to justify their reactions and movements physically. But the real problem is rehearsing in Spanish--then English--then rehearsing each of the understudy casts. I only contracted for one play, not four!”

The Spanish-language staging of “Divinas Palabras” opens Wednesday at Theatre/Teatro in the Lincoln Heights district; beginning Oct. 4, it will play in repertory with the English-language version.

THEATER FILE: Harold Nicholas, Freda Payne and Theresa Hayes star in the Long Beach Civic Light Opera production of Duke Ellington’s “Sophisticated Ladies” opening Oct. 5 at the Terrace Theater.

Philip Baker Hall is Willy Loman; Edith Fields, Christopher McDonald and Gregory Wagrowski his long-suffering family in Bill Bushnell’s revival of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, downtown. Bill Pullman, who was initially slated for McDonald’s role, instead chose to remain with his pregnant wife in New York. Originally scheduled for Oct. 7, the opening of “Salesman” was delayed until Oct. 28 by an extension of Christopher Durang’s “The Marriage of Bette and Boo.”

Business Week magazine celebrates its 60th anniversary Monday with a production of excerpts from four original playlets. It’s a benefit for the Playwrights Theatre, at the Westwood Playhouse. The program includes parts of Laura Shamus’ “Delicacies,” Libbe HaLevy’s “Kazoo,” “Sorority Queen in a Mobile Home” by Kevin Mahoney and Michael J. DiGaetano, and Richard Polak’s “Baby Bonds.” Polak, whose “The Singles Guide” recently played the Richmond Shepard, is the artistic director of the Playwrights Theatre by night, and the vice president and manager of a consulting and insurance brokerage firm by day. Information: (213) 466-1767.

CRITICAL CROSS FIRE: Following a run last May at South Coast Repertory, Marlane Meyer’s modern-day Las Vegas tale, “The Geography of Luck,” is playing at the Los Angeles Theatre Center.

Said Dan Sullivan in The Times: “The play goes better than it did at South Coast. Not that the cast is necessarily more acute or that director (David) Schweizer has a firmer grasp of it intellectually. But he understands its music better.”

From Kathleen O’Steen in Daily Variety: “Schweizer deserves a good deal of credit for managing to convey both the bitterness and comedy here. It’s not an easy feat considering Meyer’s propensity towards dark, sordid images.”

Noted the Herald Examiner’s Charles Marowitz: “At the heart of all this spiky imagery is a core of wet sentimentality, which ultimately saps the energy from (the play’s) fashionable facade.”

Thomas O’Connor of the Orange County Register declared the LATC production “in several ways better than Orange County’s . . . but this more theatrically savvy staging only distracts us from Meyer’s tendency to turn precious in writing morality tales.”

Comparing the staging with its original reading in LATC’s New Works Project, the L.A. Weekly’s Bill Raden said: “Meyer has tied up her original draft’s intriguing loose ends with a redemption that comes too easily and neatly.”