Playwright: Jose Rivera
At: greasy joan & company at The Viaduct
Phone: (773) 761-8284; $20
Runs through: April 6
Jose Rivera is a street poet of a high order, combining slangy, jazzy vernacular with rich-but-hard urban imagery and religious iconography, as he attempts to reconcile his tropical and Catholic Puerto Rican roots with the hustle of New York City life. His early play, Marisol, is a perfect example, with its Puerto Rican-born title character lost in a New York that has become a devastated wasteland.
However, Marisol is neither a New York play nor particularly Latino, for Rivera's vision is more broadly apocalyptic, that of an earth—perhaps a universe—laid waste when the angels rebel against an old, disinterested and dying God. The title character, a young Latina office worker, is forewarned of the heavenly war by her guardian angel, and becomes a helpless, unwilling witness to the havoc visited upon earth; a havoc that appears to suspend death even as it robs life of any meaning beyond the animal survival. At play's end, Marisol has a glorious vision of rebirth that may or may not be true, leaving the audience to decide for itself.
The message is heavy and abstract, but Rivera tells it with energy and surprising humor, drawing a skewed world in which coffee is extinct and the moon drifts to Saturn. Describing a disaster in the Midwest, Marisol's guardian angel says, 'You can smell the polyester, the burned malls, the unemployment, the flat vowels,' which is pretty funny stuff.
Rivera's work must be well-produced to be appealing, and greasy joan & company is up to the task. The superior Marisol, Sierra Cleveland, bites into the role with explosive physical and vocal vigor without ever losing the air of vulnerability Marisol must retain. She's cagey and tender, earth mother and naïve waif in effective combination. Cleveland is well-supported by Kathleen Powers as her half-crazed friend June, and Ed Dzialo as June's fully crazed brother. Under Julieanne Ehre's most understanding direction, they, too, attack their roles with edgy physical intensity in the service of a wide emotional range. It's easy to make Marisol merely bizarre, but Ehre and company never fall into that trap.
The fine acting is backed by Matthew York's artistic scenic design, painted by Scott Pondrom. The stage floor and back wall are a cartoon-like mural of a city skyline, with all surfaces covered in dense and mostly illegible graffiti. Many colors hide within an overall dark impression, as do the Greek letters Alpha and Omega, a religious reference to the beginning and the end. Andrew Hansen's punchy sound design contributes a great deal to mood and pace. Jenna Sjunneson McDonald's lighting and Michelle Tesdall's costumes serve Marisol well.
Once again, greasy joan & co. offers something uncommon, both play and production.