Playwright: José Rivera. At: National Pastime Theater at the Preston Bradley Center, 941 W. Lawrence Ave. Tickets: 773-327-7707; www.nakedjuly.com; $20. Runs through: Aug. 11
There's a fundamental dissonance in José Rivera's play: When a cast of characters include such anthropomorphic incarnations as Cat, Coyote and The Moon, we are led to expect epic myth on the order of Federico Garcia-Lorca, filled with florid poetry and tragic grandeur. The story at the heart of Rivera's narrative, however, is an intimate tale replicated in homes throughout this country today.
Benito's reason for escaping from the ghetto was to join the army and Gabriela's was to marry him, but marital stresses inherent in such arrangementsthe military attitude toward "dependents" being essentially, "If the army wanted you to have a family, it would have issued you one"have caused them to grow apart. Benito's long absences overseas amid war's brutality brings him home seeking only peace and solitude, while Gabriela's isolation at a remote base in the California desert craves intellectual stimulation. When one spouse's world has shrunk under hostile pressure to the minutiae of survival, and the other's has blossomed under a regimen of adult-education classes to encompass a universe wider than either once imagined, can they rediscover what they once shared?
Interpretation of Rivera's text can vacillate in either direction. A production may emphasize the fanciful seduction of the house-raised Cat by the wild beast Coyote, with its parallels to Gabriela's temptation by an adolescent admirer. It may also adopt the tone of Rivera's mandolin-and-fiddle-playing Moon, who comes off more avuncular than archangelic, making for a cozy domestic ambience. What tips the balance in this case, though, is National Pastime Theater's new residency in the art-deco splendor of the landmark Preston Bradley Center in Uptown (not to be confused with the downtown concert facility at the Cultural Center).
The inevitable problems associated with a company moving into a larger space are immediately apparent (does anyone recall Chicago Shakespeare's first show at Navy Pier?), chiefly the actors' struggle to establish connections over distances designed to showcase the room's opera-house dimensions. Through no fault of Keely Haddad-Null's direction or her ensemble's capabilities, we find ourselves attending more to the downstage activities of the animal totemsgarbed in little more than Gary Shirmer's body paint, frolicking to the music of Michael O'Toole's Moonthan to the performances of Virginia Marie, Nelson Rodriguez and Ernesto Melchor, Jr.; the unfamiliar environment cannot help but overwhelm their impressive accomplishments.