The King Of The Desert
One-person shows have potential liabilities connected to them, along with their more positive aspects. The main liabilities can be when a performer is not strong enough to hold an audience’s attention for an entire 1-2 hours and/or the material isn’t good enough to sustain our interest for any length of time. Those problems can make any show seem longer than they actually are.
But, fortunately for us, these are not problems for Stacey Martino’s one-man show, subtitled “A Boy, A Barrio, A Dream.” Ms. Martino’s play, about 75 minutes long, concerns an actor (extremely well played by René Rivera) and his upbringing in the East Los Angeles barrio. How and why he needs to be an actor, and once there, the trials and tribulations of breaking out of the “barrio” box, is the nub of this engrossing, if somewhat confusing, performance-piece.
The confusing element (at least for this WASP) lay in the last ten minutes of the play, wherein a run on the actor’s historical facts and speculations (a daughter, a wife?, his self-esteem) get jumbled into that “magical realism” so beloved of Latin-American writers (north and south). So, for some of us, “what just happened?!” is what we walk away wondering about.
And yet, and yet, the stirring writing of Ms. Martino and the detailed acting of Mr. Rivera, do hold our attention and command our allegiance. On a small set (graphically designed by Danuta Tomzynski and vividly constructed by Michael Brainard), coupled with a fine lighting design by Tony Sanders, in what one must admit is an uncomfortable – if clean -- theatre, the evening held together, allowing us some insight into lives not our own. And what else should art be about, anyway?
(At the El Centro Theatre, 804 N. El Centro Ave, Hollywood: 323.960.5774, tickets, through June 11th, 2010.)