‘Una Buena Abogada’ @ Teatro Dallas (XXI Int’l Festival)
—Teresa Marrero
Teatro Dallas closed its XXI International Festival at the Latino Cultural Center on February 24, 2024 with Una Buena Abogada (A Good Lawyer), a one-act piece written by Marc Egea and presented by Maraton Producciones—a company billed as Venezuelan, although the team seems to be transnational and mostly based in New York City.
Directed by José Luis Useche, the piece is billed by playwright Egea in his website as microteatro (micro-theater), a fact I learned prior to writing this review but not before seeing the play. The “micro” refers to the length of the play: it lasted approximately 45 minutes, coming as somewhat of a surprise to audience members who had seen the festival’s two previous full-length plays (Persona and La Celestina,Tragicomedia de Lita).
Una Buena Abogada has two characters: a man accused of heinous crimes (José Francisco Terán), and his lawyer (Zindia Pino). The play opens with the accused walking down an aisle to the stage—wearing orange overalls, hands cuffed, and hobbling as though his feet were also cuffed. He takes center stage, breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience—or so we assume. Only later in his monologue do we understand that he’s speaking from an enclosed glass area to one escritor (writer) on the outside of the glass. No further mention of this “writer” comes into the piece.
We begin to hear the man’s story as he describes his childhood love of killing things, from cockroaches to other animals. His lengthy discourse about squashing and seeing the white juice flow out of dead cockroaches begins to suggest that he is not talking just about insects, but about actual people he has murdered. Needless to say, his self-portrait reveals a disturbed, sadistic and anti-social personality incapable of feeling guilt or regret.
Enter his most recent court-appointed lawyer, making it clear to the man that this is his last chance to procure a legal defense. Looking at the woman before him, the accused tosses out a few misogynist remarks and rejects her help, just as he has rejected all other lawyers.
Herein begins a second monologue, whereby the lawyer spells out to the accused that she, and only she, can save him from the electric chair. There is clear evidence that he raped and killed two young girls, ages five and seven. He cannot plead innocence, but…the lawyer identifies a string of procedural ‘irregularities’ from the police reports that in his case could keep him from the death penalty.
She goes on confidently about how she will handle the case and manipulate public opinion in the most cynical of ways. The accused says: “You have not asked me the question.” What question,” she asks, not really wanting to hear the answer.
As an audience member, I felt utter disgust for this “good” lawyer who willingly ignores the guilt of the accused in favor of establishing a defense based on technicalities. She may be a competent lawyer (to replace the word “good”), but comes across as arrogant and immoral.
Convinced the lawyer is as evil as he is—“Who is the monster here?,” he asks—the accused signs an affidavit giving her complete and irrevocable authority over his defense.
And as soon as he signs, he asks her another question: “Why? Why would you want to defend me?”
The lawyer´s true intentions come spilling out. She too has children, ages five and seven. It would be too easy to have him die without suffering and paying for his atrocities. She details what the accused can expect in prison: the rapists of children face a bleak and violent future of continued rape and abuse by fellow inmates, who see them as the lowest of the low.
Has the “good lawyer” redeemed herself? She triumphantly walks off the stage, leaving the murderer to steam in anger and frustration.
A few observations: the play felt as though it ended abruptly, in part perhaps because there was no mention of its brevity in the playbill or elsewhere. We were left wondering if there might be another twist to come in this courtroom drama—and as with the earlier festival entry Persona, the audience did not know when to applaud. It felt rather like not knowing if the food we’d just eaten was the appetizer or the main course.
And while the two actors delivered decent performances, I found myself straining to hear the dialogue of the lawyer (though I was seated in the front third of the audience). The voice of the accused resonated quite fully. His articulation seemed made for a large theatrical space, while the lawyer´s low volume felt as though she was acting for film, or in an intimate space.
The minimalist set had a table and two chairs, and the obligatory drop-down overhead light of popular films that highlights the sinister facial characteristics of criminals.
After the brilliant performance the previous week of Argentina´s La Celestina, Una Buena Abogada left us wanting more. Not the highest of notes for the closure of a fine festival. Kudos to Teatro Dallas for continuing the tradition and commitment established by its founders, to provide Spanish-language international content to the Dallas-Fort Worth (and North Texas) community.
Teresa Marrero is Professor of Latin American and Latinx Theater in the US at the University of North Texas. She has been seeing works by Teatro Dallas since her arrival in Texas in 1990, five years after TD was established. She reviews dance and theater.
