...has a furry feistiness and aggressive seduction, too

‘El Paso’ pursues unusual itinerary

With any successful play, the destination can be said to be worth the journey. But with Quantum Theatre's "El Paso Blue," the reverse is also true.

I'm not referring just to Quantum's artistic signature, that it mounts each project in a space chosen specifically for that play, making your trip a new adventure each time. In this case, I'm referring also to the play's own journey, a time-bending, poetic mini-epic that makes its final destination almost irrelevant.

In fact, the ending chosen by "El Paso Blue" playwright Octavio Solis doesn't seem to me essential to the play's experience or meaning. I can't fully defend this, because I'm not going to tell you how it ends. It's fated, you may say, but I disagree.

Anyway, I should concentrate instead (as any audience would) on the wonders along the way. "El Paso Blue" is simultaneously dreamlike and as real as a gritty country road. The story is told with the scrambled time sequence of a dream, but, turned linear, it starts with two buddies, Duane and Alejandro. Duane botches a clownish crime, and because he once took a bullet intended for Al, Al takes the blame and the year in jail that goes with it.

Before going inside, Al takes his new wife, Sylvie, to his father, Marcelo, for safe-keeping. Father and son have been estranged, largely because Al blames Marcelo for the death of his mother. They're snarled up in Oedipal passions and also issues of ethnic loyalty -- Marcelo's heart is still in Mexico, while Al is as American as America will let him be.

Marcelo and Sylvie start out like oil and vinegar, but gradually they start to make salad dressing, with ethnic difference as spice. Meanwhile, Al gets out of jail and, calling in Duane's debt, commandeers him and his truck to set out to find father and wife, who have disappeared.

Mary Mervis

Part of Quantum Theatre's "El Paso Blue" cast are John Marcinizyn (with guitar), Tami Dixon and Fermin Suarez.

Mary Mervis

Clockwise from lower left: Ruth Gamble, Tim Andres Pabon, John Marcinizyn and Jeffrey Carpenter.

This journey is the heart of the play, although in Solis' telling, it overlaps with some of what actually went before. It's a blundering comic quest in which the two buddies pick up as their guide China, a scruffy girl more punk than Pachucha, who may know where the two have holed up.

The real-world geography of their search is unclear, but the geography of Tony Ferrieri's wonderful theater space is vivid, like a cartoon map of Ulysses' travels, including prison, dusty farm, cantina, gas station, truck, highway, church altar and shack.

The journey is accompanied by John Marcinizyn on guitar and punctuated by songs sung in Spanish by Sylvie, a would-be chantoosie. (Michael Herman's score has been supplemented by Marcinizyn.) The music and the weird mix of radio signals Duane receives on the plate in his head (remember that bullet?) add otherworldly dimension.

Mythic, one might say -- whether the myth is of Ulysses struggling toward Penelope or Orpheus searching Hades for his wife. In the end, the key myth turns out to be Oedipus, although the wife has turned from mother to daughter-in-law, the blinding is different ... oops, I forgot. I'm not talking about the end.

Tami Dixon plays Sylvie with swagger and pathos. (Solis does not lack in sentiment.) Tim Andres Pabon is a charismatic, driven Al, and he handles Al's poetic reveries with feeling clarity. Fermin Suarez is a dark, concentrated Marcelo, until he is reborn in Sylvie's presence.

Most of the considerable comedy falls to Duane and China. Jeffrey Carpenter's bemused Duane is Al's Sancho, one of those well-meaning bumblers who always seem to get it wrong but land on their feet. As China, Ruth Gamble has a furry feistiness and aggressive seduction, too.

Sheila McKenna directs with gusto, packing this big tragi-comedy into under 100 minutes. There was difficulty opening night with acoustics, since either end of the set is a long way from the other end of the audience and the heater was running aural interference. More projection is needed, especially by China.

Some dialogue, such as the songs, is in Spanish, so if you don't have the language, like me, you pick it up (satisfactorily, I think) by osmosis and context.

As to that other Quantum journey, just go down 55th Street in Lawrenceville, beyond the chain-link fence to the river. Aside from the chance to discover newly lively Lawrenceville, the best part of this journey is the final 100 yards, when you walk through a forest of shelving lit by carnival lights to find the closed-off theater space at the end.

by Christopher Rawson

Wednesday, December 6, 2006

Where: Quantum Theater at the 55th Street Warehouse, Lawrenceville.

When: Through Dec. 17; Wed.-Fri. 8 p.m.; Sat. 5:30 and 9 p.m.; Sun. 7 p.m.

Tickets: $15-$27; 412-394-3353

Pittsburgh Post Gazette

next >

< previous