Soldier returns dragging war’s ills
A father, relieved to have his soldier son back from the war, says, “He’s home. He’s safe. He’s OK.”
His wife somberly corrects him, shortening the statement to just: “He’s home.”
The truth is, everything is not OK. Their son has returned with battle fatigue, otherwise known by the term that gives this haunting theater piece its title: “melancholia.”
Collectively devised by participants in a Latino Theater Company training laboratory, the stylized, multi-genre presentation has returned from a trip to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to join the festival of performances relaunching the downtown theater complex that has been rechristened the New LATC.
The circumstances on display in “Melancholia” are heart-gnawingly familiar from the news. To better understand what’s going on, lab members interviewed soldiers and their families, as well as assistance providers. Had convention been followed, the result might have been a living-newspaper piece. Instead, the presentation, staged by Latino Theater Company artistic director Jose Luis Valenzuela, has emerged from its improvisational development process as a heightened, almost expressionistic tale that is suffused with the magical possibility and ghosts-existing-alongside-the-living sensibility of so much Latin literature and art.
Presiding over the story are two cartoonish, otherworldly figures (Cheryl Umana and Fidel Gomez) in clown-like whiteface. They squabble about how best to present the young soldier’s tale. A blast of opera, perhaps? Borrowings from Shakespeare? When the story’s participants burst onto the scene, they too wear ghostly whiteface.
Mario, who enlisted in the Marines directly out of high school, returns to East L.A. with something eating away at his conscience. Then comes the news that his best buddy from home, who enlisted at the same time, is dead. He fragments into three Marios (Ramiro Segovia, Greg Gastelum, Germaine De Leon), who swap places to participate in scenes, silently observe or ignore it all, drunk and listless in bed.
The young soldier drifts nightmarishly through aching reality, song-and-dance surreality and super-speed, finger-on-the-remote replays through his life. He is enveloped by the blips and bleats of disembodied voices, the thump-thump of a beating heart, the throbs of techno music (sound design by John Zalewski). The light is saturated with color (design by Matt Cross), including -- worrisomely -- a blood-like red.
The company is composed largely of lab participants who created the piece, plus LTC members Geoffrey Rivas and Lucy Rodriguez, portraying Mario’s mom and dad. Still at the beginning of their careers, the young lab members deliver performances of varying quality, though most are thoroughly dynamic, especially Hugo Medina as Mario’s lost buddy.
Mario seems headed, irreversibly, toward marriage to a skeleton-faced, Day of the Dead bride. Powerless to help, his father sends a wish into the universe; he wants back the pre-battle Mario, the son who was “young, lazy, innocent, whole.”
--
‘Melancholia’
Where: The New LATC, 514 S. Spring St., downtown L.A.
When: 8 p.m. today, 3 p.m. Sunday and Nov. 11, 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday
Ends: Nov. 11
Price: $28
Contact: (323) 461-3673 or www.thenewlatc.com
Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes
The biggest entertainment stories
Get our big stories about Hollywood, film, television, music, arts, culture and more right in your inbox as soon as they publish.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
