Review: BARBS APLENTY IN SATIRE THE PLAY THAT YOU WANT at Road Theatre

Bernardo Cubria, the fictionalized scribe at the center of THE PLAY YOU WANT is a guy who will basically sell his soul, his family and probably a few spare body parts to get one of his plays produced on Broadway. The real Cubria, who is the author of THE PLAY YOU WANT, in its world premiere at the Road Theatre, enjoys a decidedly more cynical view of this, our well-known "price of fame" conundrum. The satirical juices flow - actually, they positively spew - through Michael John Garces' production of THE PLAY YOU WANT. Set in the present day, the play offers a bunch of well-known, real-life figures who are sent up and ultimately knocked down to make Cubria's point. From Oscar Eustis to J-Lo, from Gloria Estefan to Lin-Manuel Miranda, there is no LatinX cow too sacred to avoid the slaughterhouse.

Does this series of potshots make for an engaging 90-minutes of theater? Mostly, it does. With so much new contemporary drama focused on the BIPOC experience, THE PLAY YOU WANT lands a few timely blows against the marginalization of Latinos. A witty shape-shifting cast led by Peter Pasco are ably guided by Garces, the talented artistic director of the Cornerstone Theatre Company. Anybody who has ever tried to get a play produced will probably wince semi-knowingly at one of the values-sacrificing landmines that PYW protagonist is negotiating. It's a crazy dance.

Bernardo (played by Pasco with convincing sad-sackery) fancies himself the Latin Samuel Beckett, but the world isn't paying much attention. His wife Vera (Chelsea Gonzalez) is paying all the bills and doing most of the parenting of their 2-year-old son while Bernardo toils nobly as a broke theater artist. His tough-as-nails agent Chloe (Natalie Lerena) is about to drop him. All looks bleak...until Bernardo coughs up a scene from his latest opus, NARCOCOS, a play about abuelas crossing the border on the Day of the Dead. The "play" is intended to be a joke, but Chloe knows that in this cultural climate, it will sell and she secures a reading at The Public Theatre if Bernardo will simply finish it.

Some of the choicest bits of THE PLAY YOU WANT are, in fact the snippets of NARCOCOS, particularly the opening sequence in which we find Presciliana Esparolini's Abuela reciting her mournful ode to tamales and transforming into a turkey.

Yes, this play will most certainly be a turkey, but Bernardo swallows the final dregs of his dignity, and makes NARCOCOS increasingly campy and appalling. The worse it gets, the more embraced it is by both Latin and non-Latin establishments, and the brighter the stars who are drawn to its firmament. The playwright's personal life takes a dive as NARCOCOS gets fast-tracked from the Public to the Great White Way, maybe even beyond. At a certain indistinguishable point, once producer Scott Rudin (Stewart J. Zully, in fine gorgon mode) starts demanding that Bernardo write a "baby in a cage," it becomes clear that the play you want has morphed into the play that we deserve.

"Magical realism" becomes the catch-all buzz word whenever NARCOCOS (or THE PLAY YOU WANT) takes a turn for the bizarre, and indeed, Garces and his technical team cleverly play up the work's more fantastical elements, especially Credit Lighting designer Derrick McDaniel and puppet designer Lynn Jeffries who has fashioned a wonderful puppet to represent Bernardo and Vera's son, Pablo. In addition to its track record with new works, the Road has long been a small company with outstanding production values and Cubria's work is part of that tradition.

In his program note, Cubria professes to be an admirer of the artists and producers he is ridiculing. Maybe, but that's not really how this plays. The actor Alfred Molina (played by Jonathan Nichols) is an egotistical bully, earning the starring role in NARCOCOS and trading off his unearned ethnic credibility of having played Diego Riviera in the movie FRIDA. In the hands of actor Roland Ruiz, Lin-Manuel Miranda breezes into THE PLAY YOU WANT to tell Bernardo that his play is going to Broadway and to warn him that "They are going to make you compromise more than you ever have" and "We're part of a community." (a jealous Bernardo makes it a badge of honor that he detests HAMILTON).

The theatrical "inside baseball" that makes up the bulk of THE PLAY YOU WANT should play to the theater-loving crowd, and hopefully not just those who perk up at the mention of HAMILTON. Ultimately bitter, compromised Bernardo Cubria will probably be all right and he will have taken toppled a few idols as he comes to terms with the last vestige of his dignity. But so it goes since the character may end up writing for TV, an industry in which writers never have to compromise.

THE PLAY YOU WANT plays through April 24 at the Road Theatre, 10747 Magnolia Boulevard
North Hollywood. (818) 761-8838, https://roadtheatre.org/.

Photo of Presciliana Esparolini by Elizabeth Kimball

To post a comment, you must register and login.