Playwright Carlos Lacámara puts a personal face on the hot-button issue of illegal immigration in Nowhere On The Border, a Road Theatre Company drama that works best when focusing on its odd couple of 50something adversaries.

Gary Dobbs (Chet Grissom) has traveled south from Pennsylvania to volunteer for American Border Watch, a volunteer organization he describes as “providing support to the U.S. Border Patrol and other law enforcement agencies.”

In other words, he’s made it his personal business to ensure that “drug dealers, rapists, and terrorists” (his words, not mine) stay south of the border down Mexico way where they belong, and he’s doing it on his own dime no less. (Talk about a personal commitment to Making America Great Again.)

Roberto Castillo (Jonathan Nichols), on the other hand, has spent the past fourteen days in the Desert Southwest in search of his daughter Pilar (Natalie Llerena), who left Mexico to join her husband in Albuquerque and never arrived, sun-scorched days and freezing-cold nights during which he has come across numerous dead bodies, none of them hers.

It’s while awaiting Border Patrol’s arrival to claim the latest corpse that Roberto is discovered by Gary, who immediately assumes the worst.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to predict that over the course of the time Gary and Roberto spend together, suspicion and fear will morph into shared similarities and some sort of mutual understanding, but playwright Lacamára makes their journey feel fresh and new by inserting bits of wry humor along the way. (When Gary says he’s volunteering for love of country, Roberto replies, “You don’t find that in Mexico. We love our country, but not for free,” and don’t get Gary started on Roberto’s tuneless attempts at whistling.)

Nowhere On The Border proves considerably less engaging when flashing back to Pilar’s desert trek, accompanied by fellow traveler Jesus (Leandro Cano) and Montoya (a delightfully feisty Diana DeLaCruz), the hiphop-loving female “coyote” they’ve paid to accompany them on their harrowing journey, not the least because Pilar’s fate if not the others’ seems pretty much preordained.

It doesn’t help that director Stewart J. Zully has Cano, DeLaCruz, Llererna, and Thom Rivera (who plays “travel agent” Don Rey) speak their lines with Mexican accents so thick, you could cut them con un cuchillo. (Apparently when our neighbors to the south converse among themselves in Spanish, they sound like foreigners speaking second-language ingles.)

Grissom and Nichols deliver equally powerhouse performances as adversaries who end up something quite different indeed, and never more so than in the play’s deeply moving finale.

The Road Theatre Company once again scores high marks for its stunning production design, from the stark beauty of Paul Dufresne’s Southwest Desert set to Derrick McDaniel’s gorgeously sun-baked/moonlit lighting to Nicholas Santiago’s fever-dream projections.

David B. Marling punctuates his expert sound design with insect buzzes that will have you longing for a can of OFF! as guitarist Mackenzie Redvers Bryce provides mood-setting music along the way.

Mary Jane Miller’s weathered costumes merit their own cheers as do properties designers Christine Joëlle and Megan Moran’s Border Watch/desert trek paraphernalia.

Nowhere On The Border is produced by Ray Paolantonio, Brian M. Cole, and Arianna Ortiz.  Michayla J. Quinlisk Van Treeck is assistant costume designer. Bjørn Johnson is fight director.

Assistant director Richard Martinez takes charge of alternate-cast performances by Gabriela Fernandez, Lance Guest, Maricella Ibarra, Lacámara, Juan Pope, and  Roland Ruiz.

Maurie Gonzalez is stage manager and Alissa Adair is assistant stage manager.

I would have loved tseeing Nowhere On The Border as a Gary-Roberto two-hander, and I’d like to have heard its “Spanish-language” dialog delivered the way Spanish would sound to a native speaker’s ears. As is, about half of Road Theatre Company’s latest hits the mark.

The Road Theatre, NoHo Senior Arts Colony, 10747 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood.
www.RoadTheatre.org

–Steven Stanley
January 17, 2020
Photos: Brian M. Cole

Tags: Carlos Lacámara, Los Angeles Theater Review, The Road Theatre Company