Ashes of Light @ Teatro Dallas
—Reviewed by Teresa Marrero
Opening night for Dallas´ own Latino success story, SMU graduate Marco Antonio Rodríguez, was a sold-out event for Teatro Dallas at the Latino Cultural Center. Along with long-time friend, collaborator and director Victoria Pérez, the playwright spoke to the attendees at the pre-event dinner. He retold the story of how this play, Ashes of Light, actually began in Spanish as La luz de un cigarillo and how his meeting NY-based playwright Carmen Rivera here in Dallas during the production of La Lupe set in motion his career. Rivera has the longest-running play off-Broadway, entitled La Gringa, a play about a young Puerto Rican woman (not quite fitting in here nor there) who makes a trip to P.R. Rodríguez reiterated that the initial success of Ashes of Light was in Spanish, in NYC, as La luz de un cigarillo.
Ashes takes place in a run-down NYC apartment living-dining room, where we meet Julio César (Omar Padilla), who has come to attend his estranged father´s funeral. He is staying with his single mother, Luz (Nydia Castillo), who lives alone. Julio César now lives in Texas, and longs to return there as soon as possible. His tía Divina (Maritza Guerrero), a livelier and hipper version of his mother, shows up during the second act. To give the set that authentic New York tenement feel, we have Lydia (Pamela García Langton) the sweet neighbor across the alley, whose window directly faces Luz´s. Both Lydia and Divina have lost their sons, and instead dote on Julio César, their darling surrogate.
So far, the set-up is a parlor drama-comedy set in one space, with a focus on the relationships between the characters, primarily the mother and son. The trope is not new, we´ve seen it before: one or two days’ visit, the prodigal son or daughter returns home for a funeral, for Thanksgiving, for Christmas and well…caca happens. Family caca: frustrated relationships, recriminations, secrets, all build up over the stay and come to an explosive, cathartic moment. So if the trope, the set, and the plot are familiar, what makes this particular play stand out?
Simply put: the script, the direction, and the acting. In that order.
Rodriguez´s script, chock-full of dialogue mostly in English but with some well-placed Dominican Spanish sprinkled in, moves this almost two-hour play quickly. (Do not fear, there is a short intermission). It’s funny and delivers fast punches. Mami (Luz) wants something from her estranged son: information. Does he have a girlfriend, when is he getting married, when will she have grandkids, why doesn´t he move back to NYC with her, who is going to take care of her in her old age, what did she sacrifice her life for? To have a son who is far away, doesn´t particularly like her cooking and has a secret to hide? Ay dios. She does go on.
Immediately the audience becomes aware that Julio César is gay and has a relationship with Russell back in Texas. We never meet Russell. We don´t even hear his voice. We know of him through a phone conversation with J.C. By now the tension between mother and son is high. He doesn´t tell her who he is speaking with, only that it is “a friend.” We, the audience, now expect at some point the “coming out” part of the story. We wait, and we wait….But in a brief exchange with the playwright after the show, Rodriguez stated: “It´s not about that. It´s about the mother and son´s relationship.”
Luz also has several secrets, the most crucial of which comes out when she tells her son to send flowers to the father´s funeral service and sign it with the father´s last name, which Julio César has never used. As it turns out, the son was not recognized at birth by his father, and grew up with his mother´s last name.
Without giving the whole plot away, there are twists that unravel the tension between mother and son. That intense feeling has less to do with his gayness than it does with the hurt Julio has carried all his life with regards to his birth and the relationship between his parents.
Aunt Divina comes in the second act to add to the mix of suppressed sorrow, masked behind her light-hearted persona. It reminds me of the Spanish saying: Al mal tiempo, buena cara (loosely, laugh in the face of adversity). And she does, all singing and dancing until, after a few too many beers, the pain of the loss of her military son breaks through like an overflowing dam.
And all hell breaks loose.
The unraveling of tensions seems to happen all at once with some clever moments of everyone letting their hair down. One particularly hilarious moment is when Luz, in the middle of her frenzy, starts telling her sweet neighbor Lydia to mind her eff-ing business. To emphasize the point, she starts throwing the tamales Lydia has made for Julio back at her, across the alley. One hits Lydia in the face, giving her a black eye. Comedy turns into slapstick, just in time.
The situations of this play were so familiar to me, even as a heterosexual Latina who chose not to have children. The constant haranguing—when are you getting married, when are you having kids, when will we be grandparents—followed me my entire life. And the blowups in the midst of much love and repression in this play echoed mine as well as very likely that of many others.
So, the script works. Really works.
Victoria Perez´s direction brings this story to life. A long-time collaborator, I cannot imagine a better combination between writer and director. It´s always a challenge for me as a critic to comment on direction because, if it works well, it is seamless and almost undetectable, allowing the playwright´s words and intentions to shine.
Along with superb ensemble acting from the entire cast, each performer brings nuances to their characters that make them memorable and most of all, real. We each will walk away with our own favorites. I loved the Mami scenes where she kept asking Julio if he wanted more mondongo, more arroz con habichuelas—food as a way to show love. Divina was truly divine as the drunken pachanguera (partier with a broken heart); Lydia as the sweet-voiced neighbor, and Padilla as Julio César, that handsome boy-turned man with a secret, holding back just enough not to become a cliché.
Teatro Dallas’ long-time set designer, Nick Bradhauer, created a very pink, lower middle-class claustrophobic tenement apartment living area. Priceless is the huge image of Pope John Paul II (1978-2005 papal years) thus perhaps dating this piece to the near-past. Another notable feature is the Latin music included, not as a soundtrack, but rather as the record-playing nostalgia of the characters. Claudia Jenkins was the sound designer, with Joshua Manning on lighting, and Steven Smith creating the wonderful costumes (that did not read like “costumes”).
This uniquely Dominican, Caribbean, culturally specific play will appeal across borders and ethnicities. It is a family drama that many of us, in one way or another, have lived through.
Oh, and about the “coming out” part? You will just have to catch a performance to see how it all plays out.
WHEN: Through November 12
WHERE: Latino Cultural Center, Dallas (parent alert: cursing in English and Spanish)
WEB: teatrodallas.org
Dr. Teresa Marrero is Professor of Latin American and Latinx Theater at the University of North Texas, Department of Spanish.
