STAGE REVIEW : Latinos Hit Raw Nerves a Bit Softly

Where can you go for Pinata Therapy (fear of pinatas)? Where can you find a true macho man? Where can you learn to wiggle your hips to attract such a man? Try “Latins Anonymous,” the season opener at the San Diego Repertory Theatre, a funny and sometimes touching sendup of Latino stereotypes.

When life casts you as a minority in a country that celebrates white Anglo-Saxon Protestantism, it helps if you can turn your feelings of being left out into a joke that gets others to laugh with you and not against you.

That’s what “Latins Anonymous,” playing through June 30, does with Latino stereotypes.

Take the skit about the four gang members who are, on closer examination, four actors viciously vying for gang-member parts. It must be sweet revenge for the four Hollywood performers (Luisa Leschin, Armando Molina, Rick Najera, Diane Rodriguez) who wrote the show in frustration over being relegated to stereotypical Latino parts in Hollywood: pregnant maids, gang members, gang-affiliated girlfriends and revolutionaries. Especially when the punch line for all this outrageous overacting comes from the casting director: “Can you try it again with a heavier accent please?”

Just the kind of line these four must have heard over and over again in Hollywood.

In revue-format shows, the writing tends to be uneven. “Latins Anonymous” is no exception.

One can feel the difference in styles of writing from skit to skit, even without reading the credits; the performers have their names attached to their scenes.

Even so, the show, under the direction of Miguel Delgado, proves remarkably smooth, thanks to a centralizing theme of a Latino support group, Latins Anonymous, modeled after the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous.

The first step is for each one to admit he or she is Latin (not so easy for one character, Nicolette, who keeps insisting she really eez French and attends the meetings to keep a friend company). Then the characters make amends to those they have hurt in their lives, from the grandmother they kept asking “to speak English please” to those killed at the Alamo (“I’m sorry we won”).

Given this structure, the skits that get into characters, like Samuel Espada (the Latino Sam Spade given the probing assignment to find out why Latin men are attracted to blond, Anglo women) become independent slice-of-life experiences about being Latino in America. And, because the skits reflect their own real and very different lives, from East Coast to West Coast lifestyle, from Latin-American born to American-born, from activist to assimilationist, the difference in writing styles often works for them rather than against them.

“Latins Anonymous” is not a case of ha-ha bust-your-gut funniness, except for two broadly Saturday Night Live-style skits: “Machos of Omaha,” in which two Latino men try to out-macho each other, right down to one man pulling (obviously pasted) hair off his chest, and Lolana Aerobics, in which Leschin teaches Latinas the proper way to wiggle their hips to get a man.

But, at its best, it touches nerves by using the unmistakable touch of personal experience (the pain of being called a wetback, the desire to change one’s name and fit in).

The show would be better still if it pushed the envelope further. Let’s hope the group does that in the sequel it’s planning for the Los Angeles Theatre Center, which ran “Latins Anonymous” for an LATC record of six months, closing April 1.

As it stands now, the greatest weakness of “Latins Anonymous” is that it is a soft-focus “please like us” show rather than a brutally frank one. Those who have followed it from its workshop stage at the Old Globe’s Teatro Meta presentation at the Progressive Stage Company last October, will note an increased professionalism of presentation, from the writing to the performing to the elegant, well-chosen effects: Victoria Petrovich’s elegant, multi-level set with ancient Mayan ruins strewn carefully about, Brenda Berry’s eloquent lighting, the colorful quick-change costumes designed around basic black by Patssi Valdez and Jim Reva.

And it is nothing short of remarkable to see this group of well-trained actors, who had so much trouble getting cast in anything they could be proud of, turn around and write themselves a show of their own--their first--that is worthy of opening a major regional theater’s season, as this one is.

But the cost of all this investment has been a softening of what was, admittedly, an almost primitive anger in the earlier versions.

Professional advice-giver Hermana Petra (Rodriguez) now soft-peddles her greed; she actually gives good advice. Samuel Espada, after being dazzled by a blond bombshell, quickly returns to his Latina girlfriend. After the briefest of struggles, Nicolette acknowledges being Latina--with a blissful smile and a conch shell held to her breast. Right. You can shove those endings away in the happily-ever-after fairy tale file.

It would be as if “The Color Purple” and “The Women of Brewster Street” were amended to show more upbeat portraits of African-Americans.

But “Latins Anonymous” cries out for a less-compromising sequel. This work is good enough to have the audience eating out of its hands. It should return the applause by delivering that audience something tougher to chew on the next time around.

“LATINS ANONYMOUS”

Written and performed by Luisa Leschin, Armando Molina, Rick Najera and Diane Rodriguez. Directed by Miguel Delgado. Originally directed by Miguel Delgado and Jose Cruz Gonzalez. Set by Victoria Petrovich. Lighting by Brenda Berry. Costumes by Patssi Valdez and Jim Reva. Sound by Adam Wartnik and Nathan Stein. Musical arrangements by David Torres. Stage manager is Ronn Goswick. At 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays and 7 p.m. Sundays with Wednesday and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. through June 30. Tickets $18-$22. At 79 Horton Plaza, San Diego, 235-8025.