Review: WELCOME TO ARROYO'S at The Zack

Kristoffer Diaz's full-length play, WELCOME TO ARROYO'S, was written in 2010 as part of the Hispanic Playwright Project at Southcoast Repertory Theatre. This show, a narrative about Puerto Rican hip-hop founders, takes on themes of culture, family, and the conflict that occurs between adult siblings who've lost their parents. Diaz uses multiple playwriting concepts to tell the story. WELCOME TO ARROYO'S is part play with music, part plot driven story, and part character driven story. The play was written while Diaz was in college. There are many complexities to Diaz's choices of playwriting styles but not every element works as would be expected from a playwright honing their craft.

WELCOME TO ARROYO'S is the current production by The Tesseract Theatre Company that closed on May 7th. Brittanie Gunn directs a funny and mostly effective production of Diaz's uneven play. There are plenty of genuine laughs, more resulting from the energy, physical acting choices and rapping ability of Kevin Corpuz (Nelson) and Jacob Schmidt (Trip) than from the actual script itself. Corpuz and Schmidt play two DJs who advance half of the narrative with their hip-hop performance and their story telling. These two are the heart and soul of the play and never fail to captivate the audience when they are front and center.

The rest of the cast delivers adequate performances but are limited by the troubled script. Remi Mark (Molly) and Marshall Jennings (Derek) have more script-substance to dig into than the other characters. Their scripted conflict and romance provides enough tension to make the audience care about their story. Mark and Jennings are at their best engaging in the fight sequences that were choreographed by Rhiannon Creighton. There are some laughs that come from the Molly/Derek storyline; however, they are delivered by the DJs commentary and music choices to support their story.

Overall, Tesseract Theatre Company's production of WELCOME TO ARROYO'S is a quality production that delivers enough entertainment and laughs to recommend seeing this show. It also introduces the local theatre community to a lesser performed play with Hispanic characters written by a Hispanic playwright. Tesseract Theatre Company should be commended for producing a play that would have not otherwise performed in the St. Louis Theatre Community.

WELCOME TO ARROYO'S closed on May 7th, prior to publication of this review.