Mojada

B+

This season’s mini-trend of reinterpreting classic works continues with this New York premiere by MacArthur Genius award winner Luis Alfaro, whose Oedipus El Rey was a hit at the Public last year. Alfaro has once again superimposed a story about the Latino immigrant experience onto a Greek tragedy, this time Euripides’s Medea. The play originated in Chicago in 2013 and has played in Portland and Los Angeles with revisions en route that changed the location to the city of performance. The current version at The Public Theater is set in Queens’s Corona neighborhood in the backyard of the decrepit house where Medea (Sabina Zuñiga Varela) lives with her lover Jason (Alex Hernandez; Kingdom Come), their 10-year old son Acan (Benjamin Luis McCracken) and Medea’s lifelong family servant Tita (Socorro Santiago; Unfinished Women), who is our narrator and chorus. Medea is a skilled seamstress doing piecework at home because she is too afraid to leave the house. Jason is a construction worker with a Cuban emigre boss Pilar (Ada Maris; Bang Bang Blues) whose primary interest in him is not his work skills. Luisa (Vanessa Aspillaga; Anna in the Tropics), a food cart vendor who fled Puerto Rico with her husband after a hurricane wiped them out, provides comic relief. Jason is eager for Acan to assimilate as rapidly as possible while Medea wants him to honor old ways. There are lengthy flashbacks, for me the strongest parts of the play, that recollect the family’s horrific experiences getting from their Mexican home to New York. If you are familiar with the Medea story, you may find the ways Alfaro foreshadows the climax a bit clumsy. The incorporation of elements of Michoacan folk healing traditions works fairly well. He very skillfully weaves into the story the experience of undocumented immigrants in today’s America. A few references are right out of the headlines. The acting is mostly strong; however, I found the depiction of Pilar a bit unmodulated. I also thought that Hernandez’s portrayal of Jason showed him too thoroughly assimilated. Cynic that I am, I have a hunch he was chosen more for his good looks and physique than his acting chops. Arnulfo Maldonado’s (A Strange Loop) scenic design offers no clue that the location is New York. Haydee Zelibeth’s (Playing Hot) costumes are very effective in establishing character. Mikhail Fiksel’s sound design (We’re Only Alive for a Short Amount of Time) contributes a lot to the production. Director Chay Yew’s (Oedipus El Rey) direction is fluid. Even though the contemporary and ancient elements don’t always fit together seamlessly, the overall effect is very strong. Running time: one hour 45 minutes; no intermission. 

NOTE: The Public Theater has an annoying habit of hiding valuable information pertinent to the production in obscure locations in the Playbill. In this instance, there is a worthwhile article “Immigration & the Perils of the Journey” that is hidden several pages after the list of Public contributors. When you attend the Public, you would do well to give the Playbill a thorough once-over before curtain time.  By the way, “mojada” is a derogatory term corresponding to “wetback.”