An Illuminating ‘Luminarias’

According to her bio, actress Evelina Fernandez began writing plays so that she and her friends could play “something other than gang mothers, undocumented workers, hookers and suffering women kneeling before the Virgin.”

The fruit of that ambition is “Luminarias,” a brightly likable if overextended play now at the Los Angeles Theater Center and the first production in the newly refigured Latino Theatre Company’s season. Fernandez’s women are a mixed bag of warm nuts who gather at a restaurant called Luminarias to discuss men, their mothers, men, their jobs, men, their children, sex and Latino men versus white men versus Korean men.

If they sound romance-obsessed, they are. When one of them sleeps with a new guy, the other three all show up at her office the next morning to hear about it. In Los Angeles, how likely is that? “Luminarias” is one part “Heidi Chronicles,” one part “Other People’s Money” and three parts “Designing Women.” The jokes are often good, and they do rely on character, but just the thinnest veneer of character.

Sofia (the sexy Marta DuBois) says she only dates white men because, as long as she has to have a man, she wants one with money. “There are Latino men with money!” protests Irene (Dyana Ortelli). “Name one!” insists Sofia, and the table falls silent.

Director Jose Luis Valenzuela (the playwright’s husband) orchestrates the antics of these four with affection and aplomb, and they truly seem like old, dear friends. Costume designer Joyce Kim Lee also helps define their disparate tastes. Sofia, a Beverly Hills psychiatrist, favors expensive pantsuits and rich white men while the pixie Irene, who dresses in miniskirts of fabrics not found in nature, thinks a Latina should only date a Latino. Lilly (Angela Moya), wearing full-skirted dresses from the ‘50s, is a compulsive crier who finds love with a Korean man, until his parents reject her, and she cries. The lawyer Andrea (Fernandez), whose husband of 15 years wants a divorce, has the air of a kindly shrink. She wears suits.

Whether trivial or huge, the problems these characters have are easy to figure out, and are often magically resolved, sometimes in a punch line. For instance, Sofia is seen to be cut off from her roots. The evidence: She dates only white men, and she never visits her poor old Latina mother in East L.A. By the end of the play, she’s in love with a Mexican and her mom’s crazy about him too. Voila.

On a different level, the same simplicity bedevils the play’s main event. Andrea takes the case of a feisty young woman named Cindy (Seidy Lopez), who wants to prevent the violent husband she is divorcing from having joint custody of their baby. Andrea falls in love with the Jewish lawyer defending Cindy’s husband, and she rightly takes herself off Cindy’s case, a decision that has unforeseen consequences, clearly the fault of none of the main characters. Andrea has a terrible time figuring out where responsibility might lie and wrestles with the crime of loving a man not Latino. But, in the context of the play, these questions seem like no-brainers. What’s more, it feels as though, like Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz,” Andrea has the answers to them all along.

And when it’s message time, Fernandez reaches for tripe. “Is it naive to think we’re all just people?” asks Andrea’s lover Joseph (Dean Scofield). Having met Andrea’s elder relatives, he notes that “their wrinkled skin is no different than my grandparents’. It’s just darker.” Oy. Later, in a treacly speech that explicates the play’s title, Fernandez delivers her own worst writing. “That’s the way it is with us women,” she says. “We have this flame in our heart like the luminarias, lit with the hope of finding love.” . . . etc., etc.

Patssi Valdez’s set, with its centerpiece of a curvaceous, modern Statue of Liberty, is delightful, as is Anne Militello’s lighting, which bathes the restaurant in a warm, rosy glow. The cast is uniformly good. Some plays make it easy to forgive their faults, and this is one of them. Overlooking some tripe, there is much to recommend an evening with the ladies who lunch at Luminarias.

* “Luminarias,” Latino Theatre Company, Los Angeles Theatre Center, Theatre 3, 514 S. Spring St., Wednesday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday, 2 p.m. Ends May 26. $16. (213) 485-1681. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.

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Marta DuBois: Sofia Cervantes

Evelina Fernandez: Andrea Valenzuela

Daniel Garr: Joey Valenzuela

Seidy Lopez: Cindy Rodriguez

Angela Moya: Lilly Gonzales

Dyana Ortelli: Irene Hernandez

Geoffrey Rivas: Latino male roles

Dean Scofield: Joseph Levinson

A production of the Latino Theatre Company in association with the city of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department by Evelina Fernandez. Directed by Jose Luis Valenzuela. Produced by Sal Lopez and Mark Friedman. Sets Patssi Valdez. Lights Anne Militello. Costumes Joyce Kim Lee. Sound Mark Friedman. Dramaturge Juan F. Pazos. Stage manager Ted Goldenberg.