José Rivera's Cloud Tectonics is certainly an attractive play for an up-and-coming theater company like Halcyon Theatre to tackle.
Cloud Tectonics economically only needs three actors. The plot allows designers free reign to blend kitchen-sink realism with whimsical fantasy. And then there's the sometimes lofty text that romantically aims to say something significant about the fleeting nature of life.
First-time Halcyon Theatre director Juan Castañeda does a mostly respectable job of guiding the play's magical-realism mystery and pre-Millennium paranoia along. Problem is that Rivera overplays his hand by revealing too much about the mysterious character and situation at the end. By then, the play becomes tedious as you practically hear Rivera saying, 'And the moral of the story is … '
Cloud Tectonics follows Aníbal ( Miguel 'Guelo' Morales ) , who picks up a beautiful and very pregnant hitchhiker Celestina ( Aimee Bravo ) during a drenching rain storm in Los Angeles. Celestina is desperately on a quest to find the father of her child, so Aníbal takes pity on her and invites her into his home.
Bravo does a fine job of making Celestina simultaneously pathetic and mysteriously entrancing, leading you on to want to find out more about why she needs a man to cling onto. But her performance feels weighted down when playing up against Morales' largely blank slate turn as Aníbal.
Morales more than lives up the casting demands of being extremely handsome, but his performance could use a bit more aggravated confusion and simmering sexual tension to make these scenes pop better.
The performance that sticks out the most memorably is Greg Wenz as Aníbal's military brother, Nelson. Wenz bursts onto the stage with such a macho Latino bravado and perfect comic timing that you wish Rivera had built the play around the energetic Nelson instead of the stasis machinations of Celestina on Aníbal.
Within the cozy theater space of the Peter Jones Gallery, set designer Tony Adams teams up with lighting designer Adrienne Day to a sometimes magical setting of cotton clouds and subtle color shifts. Even the rumblings of the nearby CTA trains and Metra occasionally add to the sometimes cataclysmic dread in the text.
Cloud Tectonics might not be a great play, but Halcyon Theatre does a mostly respectable job with its presentation. The play does make you think about time and the brevity of life, even if it is too heavy-handed with the delivery.
Playwright: José Rivera. At: Halcyon Theatre at Peter Jones Gallery, 1806 W. Cuyler.. Phone: ( 312 ) 458-9170; $10-$15. Runs through: Feb. 17
