Playwright: Jennifer Barclay. At: Teatro Vista at Theatre Wit, 1229 W. Belmont. Phone: 773-975-8150; $25. Runs through: June 12
As quaint as it may seem to urban audiences, there are American towns too small to pay the salaries of federal judges. One such village is the upstate New York municipality of Freedom, whose sole magistrate is Justice Mayflower, her given name echoing her status as a state-licensed J.P. and her surname affirming her patriotic lineagetraits conferring on her the responsibility for maintaining order within a population shaken by recent tragedy. To be sure, a year has passed since the school shooting that left two girls dead and another still missing, but when a stranger seemingly enamored of death joins the community, unspoken terrors suddenly resurface. Oh, by the way: newcomer Gabriel is Mexican and Ms. Mayflower is African-American.
Whatyou thought that racial/ethnic tensions were restricted to Whites and Everybody Else? By its acknowledgment of xenophobia as a universal phenomenon, author Jennifer Barclay's premise breaks dramatic ground usually left undisturbedmuch as Freedom's citizens suppress discussion of their trauma, only to fall prey to irrational fantasies when confronted, literally, by skeletons, not shut away in closets, but paraded in effigy alongside flowers and candles heralding the ritual internment of a disturbingly-small coffin to celebrate the Día de los Muertos.
In an age when public perceptions are shaped more by images from popular fiction than actual experience, we might forgive Gabriel's neighbors their suspicions. OUR ignorance is only temporary, however. Under inquiry by Justice's rebellious granddaughter, Gabriel acquaints us with a culture whose close relationship with departed relatives might well manifest itself in conversation conducted as if they were still alive. For Justice, herself beset by doubts over her part in alienating the adolescent Portia's estranged mother, the comfort offered to the lonely child by these exotic rites becomes increasingly threatening, even as our matriarch struggles against the hysteria enveloping her peers.
This is a lot of story to pack into a mere 70 minutes, but director Joe Minoso and the muscular ensemble of Cheryl Lynn Bruce, Desmin Borges and Paige Collins reject propagandistic caricatures to deliver cliché-free interpretations of complex personalities. And if the metaphors sometime crowd as thickly as memento mori on a calavera-bedecked shrine, the symbolism of the Mayflower home's carefully-tended garden is prevented from becoming labored by Regina Garcia's scenic array of autumn blooms so vivid, you want to pick them.