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Gloria Garayua, Adriana Gaviria, David Pintado & Elias Escobedo
in Octavio Solis’ Lydia at Marin Theater Company. By Ed Smith.
Some stories come from deep enough in an artist's heart and work their way far enough into one's own, that to pick them apart feels criminal. Such is the case with Marin Theatre Company's Production of Lydia, by Octavio Solis. It is the story of a Mexican-American family in El Paso, Texas, a synaptic bundle of people, firing, mis-firing, loving, lusting and living in spite of everything.
Darkness. Light. A heartbeat. Ceci speaks. A poem. An introduction to the family. Everyone is loved. Everyone's beauty carved out of their struggle. A mother, Rosa (Wilma Bonet), tries to fit Jesus into everything. A father, Claudio (Luis Saguar), sits beneath headphones, in front of a television, shutting out what's already in his head. A brother, Rene (Lakin Valdez), drinks, fights and watches the mail like a hawk, waiting for the draft. A brother, Misha (David Pintado) is thrust too quickly into manhood, as much by circumstance as by biology.
The language is liquid. It floods the theatre. Foot to chin we sit in the kind of words that are rarely given a voice, breathing the crisp air that lingers between cadence and bombshell. Both verse and prose are at times, trapped under heavy tongues, in clumsy mouths. But this is a testament to the writing, so big that the ill equipped wrestle it to the ground. The smallest members of the cast, however, belied their size with their mastery of the grandiose text. Seventeen year old Ceci, (Gloria Garayua) is the linchpin, both for the family and the play. In her, Garayua constructs something that is never so close to earth that we mistake it for reality, but never so far that she can't touch our hearts.
The other tiny miracle (small in stature, big on chops) is the title character played by Adriana Gaviria, who from the instant she appears, brings to the stage the kind of light you never knew you were missing. An undocumented immigrant hired as a maid, she and Ceci share a mystical bond that brings people together before tearing them apart.
The last branch of the family is cousin Alvaro (Elias Escobedo) who has recently returned from two tours of duty in Vietnam and made a career choice that is contrary to the family's shallow American roots.
This play shows us that the toughest questions almost always have simple answers that complicate everything. Central to the story is Ceci's accident. How? Why? With who?: Specific questions. Some are broader. Where do I want to be from? Who do I want to be with? Lines are drawn in the form of scars, borders. Borders are crossed: geographical, sexual, linguistic.
Director Jasson Minadakis never gets in the way of the story, but rather, massages it, freeing it from the page, instilling the kind of trust an audience requires to give of themselves fully and be led through the tale. Neither life nor art are perfect, or should be, and imperfection does nothing to detract from a beautiful life or a beautiful play. We are like Ceci, waxing full in her adolescence, but trapped, helpless, waiting for our Lydia, our Octavio, to say what we try and try and fail to say.
Go. Listen.
Lydia, plays Tuesday through Sunday through April 12.
The full text of the play, as well as an interview with the playwright can be found in the December, 2008 issue of American Theatre Magazine. You can order back issues here.
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