L.A. theater’s annual holiday hiatus is nearly upon us. Most shows will close this weekend, if they haven’t already, and new shows won’t spring up until early January.
But let’s look at the biggest exception. The Mark Taper Forum’s Palestine, New Mexico is a lavishly designed production with serious themes that opened Sunday, just before Christmas. Whoever planned the Taper calendar gets points for chutzpah - which is an especially appropriate word, considering that one of the play’s subjects is the largely hidden subculture of contemporary “crypto-Jews.”
Crypto-Jews were forced to publicly convert from Judaism to Catholicism during the Spanish inquisition, but they continued secret observances of Jewish traditions. In the New World, the Mexican wing of the inquisition pushed some crypto-Jews to the northern frontier, where they settled among the indigenous peoples of the area that would become New Mexico.
As if this isn’t enough fertile territory for one play, playwright Richard Montoya also glances at Afghanistan, where two of these 21st century Native Americans with a crypto-Jewish heritage are sent as U.S. soldiers. One of them is killed there. Montoya tries to connect the breaking of tribal barriers in New Mexico to similar endeavors in war-torn central Asia.
It’s an awfully ambitious agenda for a one-act play that lasts about 80 minutes. Montoya inexplicably makes it even more complicated, telling his story through the prism of the dead soldier’s Army captain (Kirsten Potter). She goes to New Mexico to deliver a letter to the slain man’s father (Russell Means), a tribal chief, and to try to find out what happened not only in Afghanistan but also in New Mexico.
Kirsten Potter, Ric Salinas, Richard Montoya
Why was it necessary to make this captain the focus of the narrative? We don’t learn much about her, other than that she resents sexist condescension and didn’t get along well with her (now dead) father. Is she supposed to somehow represent the audience members who aren’t male, Native American, Chicano, or Jewish?
In the meantime, the central characters of the story remain more or less in the shadows. That would be the two soldiers and their mutual great-grandmother who, decades ago, made the leap from one tribal faction to a more Jewish-oriented clan. The great-grandmother isn’t even represented on stage.
Of these three characters, only the one surviving soldier, who has gone AWOL, finally gets to speak. And his murky account of what happened when his fallen comrade tried to become a Pashto-speaking, free-lance peace negotiator feels extremely distant and artificial. The play doesn’t do justice to its New Mexico story or its Afghanistan story.
Montoya made sure to write parts - mostly comic relief - for himself and his Culture Clash colleagues Ric Salinas and Herbert Siguenza. Again, in such a short play, I wanted less time with these subsidiary characters - especially when they play three VFW geezers - and more time with the two younger men at the heart of the story. Is this a Culture Clash show, or is it not a Culture Clash show? Judging only from the results, Montoya hasn’t decided - and director Lisa Peterson and the production’s two dramaturges apparently haven’t prodded him into making that decision.
Palestine, New Mexico, Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A. Tues.-Fri., 8 p.m. Sat., 2:30 and 8 p.m. Sun., 1 and 6:30 p.m. Mon. Dec. 21 and 28, 8 p.m. Dark Dec. 24-25, Jan. 1. No public performances Jan. 12-15. Closes Jan. 24. 213-628-2772. www.CenterTheatreGroup.org.
Last weekend’s second biggest opening is considerably more holiday-related - Troubadour Theater’s Frosty the Snow Manilow, at the Falcon. It’s a mash-up of the 1969 Rankin-Bass cartoon Frosty the Snowman with Barry Manilow tunes. Like Palestine, it’ll play through the holidays, into January.
Any Troubies show is a lot of fun - no one in town is more consistent in that department. But I prefer my Troubies shows with sturdier narrative and musical sources - say, Shakespeare and U2, or It’s a Wonderful Life and Stevie Wonder.
I hadn’t actually seen the Frosty cartoon until I watched it on yahoo.com after seeing the Troubies version - or at least, I don’t remember having seen it. It would be easy to forget - it’s about as substantial as a summertime snowman. I probably should have watched it immediately before seeing the play; I might have caught another half-dozen jokes. But what’s a half-dozen in a show that seems to have hundreds?
Fortunately, much of the humor doesn’t depend on the source material. Director Matt Walker and company add a girlfriend for Frosty (the lovers are played by the dynamic duo of Paul C. Vogt and Peter Allen Vogt - male identical twins) and a slew of topical references. Indeed, just about the only thing that Palestine, New Mexico and Frosty the Snow Manilow have in common is that they make brief jokes from the Tiger Woods saga. The two jokes are equally gratuitous, but at least in Frosty, being gratuitous is part of the fun.
Frosty the Snow Manilow, Falcon Theatre, 4252 Riverside Dr., Burbank. Wed.-Fri., 8 pm. Sat., 4 and 8 pm. Sun. 4 and 7 pm. Dark Dec. 24, 25, 31, Jan. 1. Closes Jan. 17. 818-955-8101. www.FalconTheatre.com.
Finally, a word about Kooza, the Cirque du Soleil spectacle that will close in Santa Monica Sunday but will re-open on Jan. 8 in a stop at the Great Park in Irvine.
I’m eager to see if the Cirque’s upcoming permanent show at the Kodak, focusing on Hollywood, will come close to matching the exquisite artistry on display in Kooza. My last experience with a big permanent Cirque show, Ka in Las Vegas, left me longing for the intimacy of the traveling shows.
Of the several sites where I’ve seen Cirque traveling shows, none can top the Santa Monica pier location, although I’m curious to see a show in Irvine as well. In Santa Monica, I recommend a 4 pm matinee for Kooza. You enter the big top during daylight hours and exit after dark - with a view of the lights twinkling up and down the bay. It’s an apt metaphor for the kind of transformation that the show’s audience surrogate - a nebbishy, kite-flying clown - undergoes.
Despite its lack of specific holiday content, Kooza is an ideal holiday show. Much like A Christmas Carol or La Posada Mágica (now at the Odyssey), it leaves you with a warm glow about the potential within human beings.
Kooza, Santa Monica Pier parking lot through Sunday. Then the Orange County Great Park, Irvine. Jan. 8-31. 800-450-1480. www.cirquedusoleil.com/kooza.
Photo by Craig Schwartz.
