“Marisol”
Feb. 28 ““ March 3, 2007
Macgowan 1340
The moon has gone missing. Coffee is extinct. Men bear children.
As the lights dimmed and the eerie chords of Los Angeles band China Room permeated the theater, I was transported to this apocalyptic world when the UCLA department of theater’s undergraduates performed Jose Rivera’s “Marisol” this past weekend.
Situated in the front row among 70 other audience members lining the sides of the New York alleyway set, I sat in the realms of a mystical urban nightmare whose violent scenes were occasionally interrupted by swarms of cackling hooligans.
In “Marisol,” the world’s guardian angels have taken up arms to dethrone a malicious God and save the deteriorating planet.
Seen through the eyes of Marisol Perez, Rivera’s young Puerto Rican heroine surviving alone in the Bronx, the drama pins the destiny of the earth on the outcome of this revolution. The highly religious Marisol must decide whom she will put her faith in ““ God or the guardian angels. The play culminates in a powerful uprising of the innocent to enact change.
As the principle bearer of Rivera’s poetry, Alisha Zalkin exhales an innocence and purity as Marisol without sacrificing her authority.
Although Zalkin possesses the presence to dominate the stage on her own, when coupled with Hannah Florek (who plays Marisol’s best friend, June), the two create a dynamic duo as typical New Yorkers accustomed to the impersonal and methodical lifestyles they lead.
Lenny (Wiley Naman Strasser), June’s maniacal brother, delivers comic relief through his hyperactive mannerisms that resemble a child in need of Adderall. The crazed artist channels his overflow of creative energy to make abstract sculptures of Marisol, which he takes with him on his journey through the muck that’s left of society.
At the play’s most desperate point, when all hope for the survival of humanity seems to have decomposed and all of the characters roam the chaotic streets in utter confusion, a pregnant Lenny waddles on stage rolling a pram.
To the audience’s delightful horror, his water breaks and he delivers his baby center stage.
Through graduate student in directing Efrain Schunior’s unsparingly provocative interpretation, actors tear across the stage in a vicious thrill as chaos descends upon the methodical lives of New Yorkers.
For most of the night, the smoke-infused stage mimics a vandalized construction site with its graffiti-smeared brick walls lined with scaffolding and abandoned furniture. Six chairs representing the interior of a subway line the center. The other side of the rotating set depicts Marisol’s apartment interior, heavily ornamented with religious accoutrements.
The ingenious sound design by Michael Cooper and Sohail E. Najafi interchanges music, the hum of New York’s streets, and the croaking voice of mass media. When coupled with the skillful movement of the actors scaling up and down the sets, the music greatly enhances the dynamic performance.
“Marisol” draws attention to the darkness within our everyday actions that gnaw at the material foundations that bundle society together.
In a world plagued by hunger, disease and war, Schunior stages a play of “apocalyptic proportions,” as the tagline says, but also of realistic ones.