Passionate ‘Fool’ Gets a Bit Lost in the Mid-Sized Madrid

With the opening of Sam Shepard’s “Fool for Love” at the Madrid Theatre on Saturday, a tradition is taking shape, based on this principle: Whenever Los Angeles civic authorities open a new mid-sized theater, “Fool for Love” is among the initial offerings.

In 1985, one of the three mid-sized stages at the city-funded Los Angeles Theatre Center opened with the L.A. premiere of Shepard’s play. The Madrid, in Canoga Park, is L.A.’s first municipal mid-sized theater since LATC, and “Fool for Love” is the first fully professional theatrical production at the new Madrid. A footnote of some interest concerning this new tradition is that both of these city-endowed productions featured casts of a particular race or ethnicity. The LATC cast was all black. The Madrid staging, a co-production of East L.A. Classic Theatre and the city, features an all-Latino cast.

Whites already have had several shots at the play, in its original productions (before L.A.) and many times since then. So perhaps next time Los Angeles opens a mid-sized theater, the cast of “Fool for Love” will be all Asian or all Native American.

We probably won’t see all-male or all-female productions any time soon, however. The essence of “Fool for Love” is the love/hate affair between a man and a woman, Eddie and May, as they reunite for what sounds like the umpteenth time, in a seedy motel room on the edge of the Mojave Desert. This is one of those plays that depict men and women as engaged in eternal strife.

These two combatants are especially hard to separate, because they’re related by blood. They share the same father, though not the same mother. They discovered this after they started fooling around, says Eddie. Their father, the Old Man, is now a part of their lives only as a spirit who interrupts their wrangling from time to time to offer his perspective. The only other character is a rather diffident suitor of May’s, Martin, whose arrival is the catalyst for the telling of their stories.

By the standards of Shepard’s more recent work, “Fool for Love” is a small play, a one-act. Its scale makes it a questionable selection as a vehicle with which to open mid-sized theaters, especially stages with standard proscenium arches, like the Madrid and LATC Theatre 2, the site of the 1985 production. This play’s action would be more intense if we all had ringside seats in some sub-100-seat black box.

Director Jon Lawrence Rivera and set designer Douglas D. Smith created a motel room that appears to be within a cage. At the beginning of the play, the Old Man yanks a rope and a chain-link fence falls noisily into place behind the motel room, as if the Old Man is the jailer who has placed Eddie and May in their psychological prison. Since we’re on the same side of that fence as the couple, this device is probably supposed to make us feel that we’re trapped inside the room along with them. The prison atmosphere is also emphasized with the amplified echoes of the doors that repeatedly slam whenever someone enters or leaves the room or the bathroom, a sound effect that Shepard prescribed in the stage directions.

Though these elements help push the action across the proscenium, a feeling of distance still pervades this production, and the theater acoustics are partially to blame. For spoken-word drama, the space is prone to a slight echo that muddies some of the sound. The theater also is used for concerts, which reportedly sound better; perhaps theatrical producers who contemplate using the Madrid should consider small musicals.

Despite these limitations, Rivera’s staging has the requisite passions. Michael DeLorenzo’s Eddie and Jackeline Duprey’s May mix it up with fire and urgency. DeLorenzo’s brawny frame and bedroom eyes are a natural match for Duprey’s lithe carnality. James Victor’s Old Man and Geoffrey Rivas’ Martin offer strong support.

The Latino subtext encouraged by the casting is not a major factor, but it does add a new dimension to a few of Eddie’s lines, in which he contrasts himself with Mexicans and Mexican migrant workers, whom he envies. This Eddie, if seen as Latino at all, is from a heavily assimilated line of Latino Americans. By contrast, Duprey’s May speaks with a much thicker Spanish accent; we momentarily wonder how recently arrived her mother was in the United States. Perhaps the Old Man sought out a variety of Latinas, of different degrees of assimilation. It would be interesting to see if these nuances are reduced or enlarged if the production travels to the Festival de Otono in Spain next September, which is its eventual goal.

* “Fool for Love,” Madrid Theatre, 21622 Sherman Way, Canoga Park. Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Ends April 24. $12-$25. (818) 347-9938, (213) 485-1681. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.

Michael DeLorenzo: Eddie

Jackeline Duprey: May

Geoffrey Rivas: Martin

James Victor: The Old Man

Sam Shepard’s play. Directed by Jon Lawrence Rivera. Set by Douglas D. Smith. Costumes, hair and makeup by Bill Chrisley. Lighting by Gerry Gregory Linsangan. Sound by John Zalewski. Stage manager Ricardo Figueroa.