He makes each distinct and fully formed in seconds. Herbert Siguenza, the Rep’s artist/physical poet in residence, plays countless persons, from evil to surprisingly generous. It would be near impossible to go wrong with Jennifer Paredes (one of SD’s most in-demand actors) as defiant Vampi Jorge Rodriguez as fearsome and funny Atomiko Bryant Hernandez, a humorous and touching Tacho Catalina Maynard as Irma, Tres Camarones’ most famous bowler Xavi Moreno and Javier Guerrero sharp and effective in various roles and young Kenia Ramirez as Nayeli, Dorothy of Oz, only much more visionary and a master of karate. A turntable, cacti sliding by, rows of chairs coming and going, add comic touches.Ī fine ensemble cast directed by Sam Woodhouse gives the piece the best possible chance. A stage-within-the-stage includes a rear screen, where Wallace’s projections add realistic touches. Roth’s soundscape and Matt Lescault-Wood’s sound design add dimension to Ian Wallace’s functional set: adobe walls, with the tiara-like suggestion of Tres Camarones’ only remaining church. Ardent, Latino-inflected songs shoot energy into a sometimes flagging pace. Michael Roth’s original score makes it a musical or, more accurately, a play with music. I’d be curious to see the others, because I suspect they couldn’t top the San Diego Rep’s version. It opens in several cities around the same time. Into the Beautiful North is part of the National New Play Network’s “rolling world premiere” series. But the play, which omits several characters, prefers the comic to the potentially tragic. They’re harassed and deprived at almost every step, and their success is often in serious doubt (homophobia tracks gay Tacho, for example, wherever he goes). In the book, the courageous quartet crosses the border twice: under a fence and through a tunnel.
Then it would head east up Lomas Santa Fe Drive, tour Rancho Santa Fe and Lake Hodges, and enjoy the sights and three or four geographical changes along the way. If the novel were a trip from San Diego to Escondido, it would go up I-5, check out the flat mesas and low lagoons to the west, like riding a slow roller-coaster. Theater’s constraints make the play cover ground quicker, but in fits and starts. By the time Nayeli and the others set out for the U.S., Urrea makes the town and the quest matter a great deal. It delineates the characters, local politics, dreams, and illusions. The novel spends that much time in Tres Camarones. The Magnificent Seven spends at least the first 45 minutes rounding up the band. In page after page, he describes everyday sights and locations through fresh eyes - always revealing something new about places you thought you knew, be it Colonia Libertad, site of most border crossings, or Clairemont (where everything “went in circles, from cul-de-sac to cul-de-sac, with those dead palm trees above your head, and you never found a way out”). Born in TJ, Urrea grew up in San Diego (studied writing at UCSD), and has a keener-than-most novelist’s eye for both sides of the border. Now for the obligatory “it ain’t the book” paragraph.
The quartet has adventures: some funny (as when they see a lawn with sprinklers and Nayeli discovers that “The United States has grass!” or when Atomiko learns he can wash his hands in steaming hot water) some horrific, on both sides of the border some mystical, as when snow falls on Nayeli and Atomiko for the first time. He’s so macho, he’s convinced he’s a comic strip hero - Atomiko - in need of a cause. Ex-military and “baddest of the trash pickers,” he’s the opposite of the Cowardly Lion. Along the way the trio picks up Kiko at the Tijuana dump.