Playwright: José Rivera. At: UrbanTheater Company at the Batey Urbano, 2620 W. Division. Phone: 312-239-8783; $20. Runs through: Dec. 12
Martial law reigns over Los Angeles, replete with uniformed soldiers rounding up the usual suspects, but this doesn't stop Señorita Mayannah from celebrating the Day of the Dead in her accustomed manner. Once a year, the reclusive heiress invites two strangers into her home for a dinner in honor of her deceased mother and father, rewarding those selected for their participation with not only a sumptuous meal, but transportation through the ravaged city in a private limo and a generous monetary gift to take home at the end of the evening.
We get our first hint that this is not an ordinary philanthropic gesture when we note the furnishings of the ornate dining room, decorated with reproductions of religious paintings—Caravaggio, El Greco, Goya—and candlelit icons in quantity suggesting a chapel in a wealthy Iberian parish. The menu includes a likewise exotic entrée, which, we learn, represents the orphaned hostess's revenge on the tiger responsible for her parents' untimely death while traveling in India. The guests this time are not without their eccentricities, too: Ani is a shy spinster recovering from an obsessive crush on a television newscaster and Rosemary is a projects-raised waif suffering from multiple-personality disorder.
There is a scientific basis to José Rivera's bizarre premise, however. Mayannah has read about food-chain transference of DNA, along with the memory contained therein ( you are, literally, what you eat, by virtue of having eaten it ) . The plan behind her annual rite is to retrieve some part of her progenitors' consciousness by dining on a descendant of the animal in whose feline genes it now rests. As sirens wail in the streets below, each of the damaged women makes her confession and in doing so, discovers a startling synchronicity in their histories—those slippery DNA strands circulate fast and far, you know—culminating in the miracle so diligently pursued.
Jorge Félix's sepulchral scenic ambience doesn't include olfactory intoxicants ( e.g. incense ) , but even so, playgoers may find themselves descending into a trance-like focus engendered by Rivera's mystical sensory-rich imagery—particularly as declaimed with seductive solemnity by Marilyn Camacho, Kate Brown and Amanda Powell playing, respectively, the charismatic Mayannah, spartan Ani and volatile Rosemary. Under Marti Lyons' direction, the action proceeds at a measured pace belying its brief 80-minute running time to cast a hypnotic spell leading us on an intricate journey through the dark corners of the human soul.
