‘Radio Mambo’ Tunes In Ethnic Tension

South Florida becomes a distant mirror for Los Angeles in “Radio Mambo: Culture Clash Invades Miami” at the Tamarind Theatre in Hollywood.

Culture Clash is a local performance trio that focuses mainly on Latino themes, but for this seriocomic piece, the group (Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas and Herbert Siguenza) interviewed about 75 Miamians of different races and backgrounds. The result is a wry, sharply observed and sometimes rueful portrait of a city both like and unlike our own.

“Radio Mambo” sketches Miami in “the past, present and future,” paying special attention to the plight of the Cuban refugees who fled Fidel Castro’s regime.

Castro remains an obsession with this show’s emigrants, though their feelings are laced with irony. In one bit, a middle-aged expatriate bitterly recalls the government crackdown that followed the 1959 revolution, but then condemns Castro for providing training for the lower classes.

The troupe also draws some unspoken parallels with ethnic tensions in Los Angeles. A black gangsta (given a convincing, slightly suffocated dialect by Montoya) delivers an early warning to turf-crossing Latinos, then reappears as an inmate in the Dade County Jail. “I’ve been doing wrong for so long,” he explains, “to me doing right is wrong.”

The funniest bit catches up with a Cuban woman and her white-trash boyfriend, whose demolition company profited greatly from Hurricane Andrew. After complaining about the close kinship in Latino families, the man deadpans: “I can go a week without talking to my folks. I’m Norwegian.”

Other scenes could use some pruning or revision. An awkwardly written dialogue between two elderly black women discussing the Overtown neighborhood drags on far too long, as does a pointless soliloquy about the hurricane. And this show is too smart not to shed its occasional gay-baiting humor.

Director Roger Guenveur Smith otherwise keeps the pace brisk, with each scene gliding into the next and mambo music punctuating the evening. The performers enjoy an easy and appealing rapport that only accentuates their respective talents.

* “Radio Mambo: Culture Clash Invades Miami,” Tamarind Theatre, 5919 Franklin Ave., Hollywood. Thursdays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends April 14. $18-$20. (213) 466-1767. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.