TV REVIEW : Blasting Through Stereotypes in ‘Bowl’

The aptly-named comedy trio Culture Clash is to Latinos what “The Colored Museum” is to African-Americans--a raucous, self-mocking send-up of cultural icons and stereotypes.

Given that Latino culture is almost nonexistent in network programming, it’s terribly refreshing to see the radical/chic Culture Clash explode like a pinata in “Bowl of Beings” on “Great Performances” tonight (at 10 on KCET Channel 28 and KPBS Channel 15, 9 on KVCR Channel 24).

In the face of Los Angeles’ diminishing Eurocentric society, the very name Culture Clash epitomizes the city’s multiracial tremors. The horrible bean-inspired pun “Bowl of Beings” signals the blend of slapstick and satire that cuts like shears through the diversity and adversity of the Latino experience.

The show, which was among the last hits to play last summer at the now-defunct Los Angeles Theatre Center, is a series of seven swirling, stylishly-produced sketches written and performed by the irreverent Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas and Herbert Siguenza.

The measure of the show’s aggregate strength is that the nominally weakest sketch is the opening slapstick ridicule of Chris Columbus (“Don Colon”), who’s shot by his half-Indian son, Vinnie, for “500 years of genocide, for La Raza, for Fernando Venezuela” and for raping an Indian woman named America (the show’s choreographer-dancer Lettie Ibarra).

Among the most uproarious is “The Return of Che,” in which Che Guevara (the bearded and bereted Siguenza) materializes from a silk-screen poster seeking an update on the success of communism and the revolution. Later, in a scorching monologue from a padded cell, Montoya confesses that he was “a white boy wanna-be” and cries “I’m a Chicano hamburger helper trapped inside the Beverly Center and I can’t get out.”

Running through the material is disdain for the term Hispanic (because it’s Iberian, not Mexican and Indian). These guys, or vatos , are reclaiming their roots in the Aztec Southwest (“the land the Yankees stole”). What really drives these guys crazy is whites usurping their culture: “Run for the hills. Have you heard the news? Madonna wants to play Frida Kahlo in a movie, man.”

Even lowriders, the Chicano handshake and--horrors--Cesar Chavez’s fasting are skewered. No Latino is sacred, save (by omission) Luis Valdez and his grape-field Teatro Campesino actos, to whom Culture Clash harks back in its primitive shock therapy.