Following the hallucinogenic surrealism of Plunge and the real-time fireworks of Tar, playwright Tom Jacobson concludes his mammoth Bimini Bath Trilogy with no less than an old-fashioned 1940s-style screwball comedy (with dramatic overtones) called Mexican Day, like its predecessors an enthralling, enlightening look at 20th-century L.A. history.

 The year is 1948 and second-generation Japanese American journalist Hisaye Yamamoto (Jully Lee) is at her desk at the city’s African-American newspaper when she is approached by gay Civil Rights activist Bayard Rustin (Donathan Walters) with a story to pitch.

 When inquiring at the Bimini Hot Springs and Sanitarium admissions desk about the possibility of “admission to your plunge, perhaps a therapeutic treatment or two,” Bayard has been told by Mexican-American spa employee Zenobio Remedios (Jonathan Medina) to return on Thursday, aka Mexican Day, aka “the day before the plunge is drained and cleaned, the day of dirtiest water” and therefore the one day per month that people of color are permitted to bathe.

Though Hisaye finds Bayard’s plight of interest, newspaper policy prohibits her from “becoming the story by getting too involved.”

Fortunately for Bayard, aging screenwriter Everett C. Maxwell (Darrell Larson) could well prove an ally in ending racial discrimination at Bimini Baths having recently taken a particular interest in the undeniably appealing younger man.

Unfortunately for Bayard and his cause, Everett has been banned from Bimini for life, the result of “a serious indiscretion” that had him “drummed out of society, dismissed from the Museum,” his “humiliation made quite public.”

Fortunately for audiences, this is only the beginning of real-life figures Hisaye, Bayard, and Everett’s intrepid desegregation efforts, a journey both charming (Preston Sturges and Howard Hawks would be proud) and emotionally cathartic (wartime experiences have left three of its characters scarred as a past connection binds two of them in the most gut-wrenching of ways).

 One need not have seen either Plunge (set in 1918) or Tar (set two decades later) to enjoy Mexican Day’s many pleasures, though those who’ve caught the latter installment will already have met a younger Zeno at work at the Baths, and though a prior visit to Plunge may make seeing Mexican Day a richer experience, audiences going in without previous knowledge will get to put together clues to past events referred to but not made explicit until the trilogy-closer’s cathartic eleventh-hour revelations.

Either way, Mexican Day proves a fascinating look back at a time when, as Hisaye puts it, restrictive housing covenants and exclusive public facilities were as common in Los Angeles as lynchings in Mississippi, Japanese-Americans had only recently been released from internment camps, and the Civil Rights movement that would later have Bayard Rustin working side-by-side with Martin Luther King was only beginning to take baby steps.

Performances sparkle under Jeff Liu’s expert direction that have his cast playing here, there, and everywhere on and around John Iacovelli’s ingeniously designed bathhouse-and-everything-else set.

 Walters invests Bayard with equal parts smarts and sass, Medina’s Zeno is as sexy as he is physically and emotionally scarred for life, Lee gives Rosalind Russell and Eve Arden a run for their snappy-pattered money as gal Friday “Si,” and Larson’s Everett proves both campy and cultivated while providing running movie-script-style narration (“Close shot: Maxwell gives the Negro a stern look and moves on to the next portrait”) as other characters make their own fourth-wall-breaking asides.

In addition, all four actors delight in various cameos, as Baths owner J.J. Warwick, Los Angeles Tribune editor Almena Davis, and assorted employees and patrons, and when Jacobson’s script has them dig deep, dig deep they do.

 Brian Gale’s constantly varied lighting, Dianne K. Graebner’s terrific late-‘40s costumes (including multiple accessories permitting quick character changes), and sound designer Peter Bayne’s jazzy movie-style original musical underscoring complete a fabulous production design, though occasional glimpses of stagehands moving the set’s two revolving walls can prove a distraction.

Sam Kofford is assistant director. Amanda Bierbauer is production managers. David A. Mauer is technical director.

Casting is by Victoria Hoffman. Ramon Valdez is stage manager.

 Mexican Day is produced by John Perrin Flynn and Hollace Starr. Betsy Zajko is associate producer.

Only a playwright as daring and talented as Tom Jacobson could imagine and achieve a project as mind-blowing as his fascinating, informative Ballad Of Bimini Baths trilogy. Mexican Day at Rogue Machine is the most accessibly crowd-pleasing of the bunch.

Rogue Machine @ The MET Theatre, 1089 N. Oxford Ave., Hollywood.
www.roguemachinetheatre.com

–Steven Stanley
June 15, 2018
Photos: John Perrin Flynn

Tags: Bimini Baths, Los Angeles Theater Review, Rogue Machine, Tom Jacobson