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San Francisco Chronicle
29-06-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
‘Aztlán' at Magic Theatre turns parole into epic, mythic theater
Daniel Duque-Estrada in Magic Theatre's 'Aztlán.' Jay Yamada/Magic Theatre When you're a little kid and your older relatives fight, it's like almighty gods are clashing over the fate of the universe. All you can do is cower — until that origin story moment, when on impulse you intervene, and the cosmos splits. Parole feels just as epic. Grappling your way back to full freedom, it's not just a legal process but a journey out of the underworld, reckoning with ancestors and deities, as you move toward the light. More Information 'Aztlán': Written by Luis Alfaro. Directed by Kinan Valdez. Through July 13. One hour, 35 minutes. $35-$75. Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center, 2 Marina Blvd., Building D, Third Floor, S.F. 415-441-8822. In Luis Alfaro's 'Aztlán,' the mythological and the prosaic fuse in a burst of flaming red in an altar bedecked with flowers, an earth-shaking ritualistic dance and characters so ripe and juicy you want to keep hanging out with them after the play's over. Magic Theatre's world premiere, which opened Saturday, June 28, is the kind of show where a young woman asks the hero two tone-whiplashing questions back to back, and it all magically works. First: 'Why do guys like you always have to be saved?' Then, after a sudden kiss: 'Did you have Taco Bell?' Advertisement Article continues below this ad Gabriela Guadalupe in 'Aztlán.' Jay Yamada/Magic Theatre Directed by Kinan Valdez, the script still has some growing pains. As the recently released Aztlán (Daniel Duque-Estrada) tries to curb his anger and dodge bad actors long enough to meet his parole requirements and build a new life for himself in the Central Valley, the play that bears his name doesn't conclude so much as peter out or, in a panic, declare itself over. Everyone keeps telling Aztlán that his prodigal brother Mictlāntēcutli, or Mickey (Sean San José), isn't worth trying to find. He's a force of darkness who 'makes everyone's life miserable,' as their little sister Tlalli (Gabriela Guadalupe) says. But when the two finally confront each other, maiming each other by way of greeting until Mickey's biggest sucker-punch, a truth bomb, drops, it's as if the show has painted itself into a corner. Unable to figure out where to go next, it resorts to preachy retreading of points the show had already made more effectively through implication: 'We are the recipients of a short-end-of-a-stick, people who end up romanticizing their trauma.' Still, along the way, Aztec mythology offers a brilliant reframing. Aztlán, whose name refers to the spiritual homeland of the Aztec people, isn't just society's most marginalized — a toy for his parole officer, Aguila (Ogie Zulueta); a pawn in the game of a corrupt transitional housing supervisor, Balanque (Juan Amador); a reject of his own mother, Metzli (Catherine Castellanos). Advertisement Article continues below this ad Sean San José, from left, Daniel Duque Estrada and Ogie Zulueta 'Aztlán.' Jay Yamada/Magic Theatre No, Alfaro says, he's also the heir of kings. As characters don bird masks and feather headdresses (with costumes by David Arevalo), while Joan Osato's video projections open portals into the Milky Way galaxy, tiny globules of water, spinning celestial bodies and crumbly handfuls of earth, you see how much is at stake in one man's redemption. 'Aztlán' asks if the world can find balance again, and what fantasies we might have to give up to get there. Some of the finest performers in the Bay Area ask those questions, spinning lines the way an NBA star might balance a basketball on his finger. As twin brothers trying to coerce Aztlán onto their soccer team, Amador switches between roles like a ballet dancer pulling off a pas de deux with himself, once even pausing for a silent aside to the audience, as if to say, 'Can we just acknowledge how ridiculous this is, and how much I'm killing it?' Juan Amador, left, and Sean San José in 'Aztlán.' Jay Yamada/Magic Theatre Every new play in the Bay Area should just have a monologue-qua-aria for Castellanos, who in addition to Aztlán's mother also plays a more distant ancestor, Martina. Advertisement Article continues below this ad 'I let go of that part of me: The tender, the kind, the sweet,' she says, recounting her life. She endured so that Aztlán might live. What will he, and the rest of us, make of that weighty inheritance?
Boston Globe
03-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Huntington's ‘Mangos' explores a family's dark secrets
That doesn't make the revelation any less horrifying, of course. But it does raise the question: Is what leads up to and follows that revelation compelling enough and distinctive enough to make 'Mangos' hang together as an organic whole? The answer is: Not quite. For the most part, 'Mangos' registers as two different plays, jammed together. But González demonstrates an understanding of family dynamics: the ways in which the past is never really past when it comes to the people close to you; it's always poking its nose into the present. Advertisement The playwright also knows what kind of ingredients can create an explosive or chilling scene, and 'Mangos' unleashes a couple of doozies. The play carries echoes of Set in 2019 in a community near San Juan, 'Mangos' focuses on three sisters: 46-year-old Ismelda (Jessica Pimentel); 44-year-old Yinoelle (Yesenia Iglesias), and 39-year-old Wicha (Evelyn Howe). Their mother (Susanna Guzman) has cancer, but has lately been skipping her treatments. Their father (Jose Ramon Rosario) has suffered a stroke that left him bedridden. When he needs assistance, Papi peremptorily summons family members by ringing a bell. In another power move, he often insists that family members scratch his nose. Advertisement 'Don't Eat the Mangos' premiered in 2020 at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco, when it was led by The Huntington cast delivers strong performances all around, especially considering that they have to juggle the play's contrasting elements as it moves from comedy to horror and back to comedy and then… A hurricane is heading their way, but one is starting to build in their house, at first with familiar pressure points. Ismelda has been shouldering the bulk of the caregiving duties and is starting to resent it. In a conversation with Yinoelle, Wicha caustically notes that Ismelda got pregnant three times in her teens. There's more to that story than she knows. One of the things the sisters argue about is whether to sell their house. A momentous decision under any circumstances; infinitely more so in this case. 'We have to think about our future,' says Yinoelle. 'This place. … It's not our future.' DON'T EAT THE MANGOS Play by Ricardo Pérez González. Directed by David Mendizábal. Presented by The Huntington. At the Wimberly Theatre, Calderwood Pavilion, Boston Center for the Arts. Through April 27. Tickets are $29-$150. At 617-266-0800 and Don Aucoin can be reached at
Boston Globe
18-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
A family haunted by history in Udofia's ‘runboyrun'
The actors were ranged horizontally across the stage, facing the audience at the Huntington Theatre, with scripts on music stands in front of them. Director Christopher V. Edwards sat onstage to the left of the actors as, in a measured voice, he narrated the overarching elements of the narrative and recited Udofia's stage directions. The format was distracting at first, but the lack of a full staging ended up mattering less than expected. The cast's all-out performances gave 'runboyrun' a steadily accumulating power, along with Udofia's script. Advertisement What a gifted writer she is, possessed of the ability and discipline to delve into the mysteries of human behavior while mining a vein of lyricism, even poetry. The Ufot Family Cycle is a project of considerable scope: More than 35 arts organizations will be involved in productions of the plays in the next two years. Loretta Greco, who is now artistic director at The Huntington, produced the world premiere of 'runboyrun' in 2016 at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco. Three years later, Greco directed a production of the play at New York Theatre Workshop. The play dramatizes the lasting effects of wartime trauma as it moves back and forth in time between Worcester, Massachusetts, in 2012, and Nigeria in 1968, when it's convulsed by civil war. You couldn't help but think of Ukraine, of Israel, of Gaza, of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, of the immense suffering war has caused in so many times and places, of what one character in 'runboyrun' calls 'the broken pieces of the world.' Advertisement The play begins in 1968 in Nigeria, where a woman identified as Sister (the vibrantly alive and altogether astonishing Abigail C. Onwunali, building further on her remarkable performances in ' The war, which is in its second year when the play takes place, had erupted when the state of Biafra, mainly inhabited by the Igbo people, declared independence from Nigeria. Boy seldom speaks, but Osuala communicates the character's fear and grief by repeatedly tapping her chest – a gesture that just breaks your heart. (Later, we're also introduced to Mother, portrayed by Ngozi Anyanwu, and her first-born son, Benjamin, played by Tosin Morohunfola.) Tosin Morohunfola and Ngozi Anyanwu in "runboyrun." Annielly Camargo Then the action shifts to Worcester in 2012, where the marriage between Abasiama (played by Udofia) and Disciple (Chike Johnson), both Nigerian immigrants, is on the verge of collapse. Abasiama senses that Disciple has told her only a portion of the story of his life, and sees that as undercutting their chance at true intimacy. Unbeknownst to him, Abasiama is applying for a job as a researcher at a university. Disciple, meanwhile, is a welter of insecurities. Even though his contract to teach African history at another college has been renewed, he is humiliated by student complaints about what they claim is his odor. Beyond that, he's in a state of high agitation, fretting about a door that mysteriously opened and a computer that went on the fritz, and also by the sensation that something is on his leg. Abasiama is clearly exhausted by him, but Disciple insists: 'There is an energy. Something lives in here with us. Has been living here.' Advertisement Udofia's presence in the cast was a fascinating aspect of 'runboyrun' on Friday night. How often do you get to see a playwright performing in her own work, interacting with the characters she created and speaking the dialogue she wrote? It turns out that, along with everything else, Udofia is quite a fine actor. And from the way the past flows in and around the present in 'runboyrun,' she clearly understands that remembrance is not optional. It's an obligation. Or, as Disciple puts it: 'I have not forgotten. And even if I try to forget? Even if I try to forget, it is in the blood.' RUNBOYRUN Play by Mfoniso Udofia. Adapted for audio play by Catherine Eaton. Directed by Christopher V. Edwards. Produced as an audio play adaptation by The Huntington and Next Chapter Podcasts in partnership with GBH and Boston Public Library. Review of performance on March 14 at the Huntington Theatre. Don Aucoin can be reached at
