STAGE REVIEWS : ‘The Mission’ Moves to a Larger Venue

Culture Clash has moved its satirical show, “The Mission,” from Theatre 4 to Theatre 3 at the Los Angeles Theatre Center.

Call it a move down the stairs but up the ladder. The seating capacity is larger in Theatre 3 and more people will see these jokers.

More people should. Richard Montoya (Rich), Ricardo Salinas (Rick) and Herbert Siguenza (Herby) loosely deliver the misadventures of three Latino room-mates who want to make it as stand-up comedians in the mainstream. Their satire hasn’t grown fangs yet, but their comedy has teeth.

Earthy good humor and irreverence is their ticket. The show, slightly redecorated in its new quarters (the bigger set, lit by Jose Lopez, is still by Gronk) remains faithful to its mission: that of sending up various permutations of the word--as in Mission District, Mission Apartments, Mission Impossible, Junipero Serra’s mission(s) and these comedians’ own. This translates into plenty of self-spoofing and a debunking of the mixed cultural messages they received growing up Latino in a predominantly Anglo society--including making it in the mainstream without selling out.

The crux of Culture Clash’s show is this polarity, this paradoxical twin yearning for separatism and assimilation. The former makes self-identity easier; the latter screws it up. No wonder the show begins as a self-induced peyote nightmare that degenerates into a kind of Indian rap and spiritual defrocking of Father Serra (“one man, one mission”). The father, the very symbol of colliding cultures, stands accused of driving his “little (Indio) brown ones” to an early grave (“no Indian was ever buried before his time”).

Just how that dream lands us in the apartment that Herby, Rich and Ricky share in San Francisco’s Mission District in 1990 isn’t clear or particularly important, but that’s where the comedy zeroes in on the contemporary clashes of culture these guys have inherited.

You can guess at the obvious ones: Herby going to work in a monk’s habit at Taqueria Serra; Ricky auditioning for a TV commercial as a living taco; Rich falling flat with his Latino jokes in front of a mainstream audience. “Tell me this is just bad magical realism,” he implores.

The Culture Clash comics thrive on this type of double-entendre , aiming their pot shots as much at the Anglo-Latino culture that spawned them as at the Anglo establishment that won’t take them in. They’re quick-witted and fast on their feet even if one sometimes yearns for more than funny one-liners.

The final skit--the abduction of Julio Iglesias (“July Churches”) by these guys as a way to get on his TV special--is a particularly amusing affair, full of self-immolation and a sizzling impersonation of Iglesias by Siguenza. But while you can infer whatever social reading you like from this show (there’s plenty there), the comedy stops short of becoming dangerous.

Except for a minor reference to Bush and Quayle and the war on drugs, Salinas, Siguenza and Montoya are largely post- huelga apolitical performers. They are in the tradition of Luis Valdez, without his depth of conscience. The name is Culture Clash, however, and these artists capably articulate the juppie (their term) comedy that is the social context of the ‘80s rather than the ‘70s. There are more urgent buttons left to press, though, and given time, which is on their side, they well may find them.