STAGE REVIEW : Rough, Hellish Play Descends to Philosophical Morass, Cliche

In “The Woman with Two Husbands” (La Mujer con Dos Esposos) at Rancho Santiago College, God is a suave, crippled Latino presiding over a Heaven where women wait on men as either wives or mothers, cheerleaders or waitresses. The Devil is a blond, tough-talking white woman ruling a Hell where women lounge while men/slaves fan, massage and flex on demand. Satan calls herself Lucy Fur, and that, I fear, is as witty as it gets.

The story is simple enough: A businesswoman is offered a Faustian deal for all the good loving and good times she desires, from as many men as she can handle, with no messy commitments. The price? Her soul. Our heroine, Gabriella, rejects the deal, asserting that she wants just one good man, so Lucy Fur vengefully provides her with two, one American, one Mexican. The smitten Gabriella marries both.

Two hours plus are spent in predictable parallel scenes of wooing, wedding and discovery, American and Mexican style. All complications are brought to a head when Gabriella learns that she is pregnant, which in an ironic but unfathomable twist, becomes her salvation.

Developed by the school’s New Plays and Players Workshop, this is billed as an exploration of “personal history, cultural history, myth and imagination.” This attempt by 10 young playwrights to fit together a comic allegory is laudable, but the result is a plodding, unfunny philosophical morass.

The cultural revelations apparently intended by the deliberate juxtaposition of American and Mexican story lines are elusive, to say the least. The representations of the side-by-side weddings, for example, are flat-out cliches. The stiff whites applaud gingerly and drink champagne, and the ceremony is couched in the language of corporate merger. The Mexicans hoot and dance and guzzle beer, and the padre beefs up his speech with some vague spiritual mumbo-jumbo.

Are these representations of our cultures? Mickey Mouse and Speedy Gonzales have as much resonance. What are the ramifications of these versions of God, Satan, Heaven and Hell? How do they relate to Gabriella’s story? What implications are we to draw from a woman rescued form disaster simply because she can bear children? And is it tenable that two men, upon discovering that they are sharing a pregnant wife, would embrace her in a trio of unquestioning marital bliss? The pieces just do not fit, and the fragments present some mighty disturbing pictures.

‘LA MUJER CON DOS ESPOSOS’(THE WOMAN WITH TWO HUSBANDS)

A Rancho Santiago College New Plays and Players Workshop production of a play by Jo Bond, Karin Camp, Roy Conboy, Wendi Debarros, Mary Ann Madrid, Simon Melendez, Marcus Parrish, Eddie Rivera, Michael San Roman and Laurie Woolery. Director: Roy Conboy. Continues nightly at 8 through May 12, and at 2 p.m. May 13, in the Little Theatre West at Rancho Santiago College, 17th and Bristol streets, Santa Ana. Tickets: $6 to $8. Information: (714) 667-3163.