WAITING

Live performances have returned to the Atwater Village Theatre for the first time in over sixteen months, and though I’m not quite sure what to make of Daniel A. Olivas’s absurdist comedy Waiting, at the very least the latest Playwrights’ Arena World Premiere serves as a taste of what lies ahead.

Valentina Guerra and Raul Vega Martinez play Chavalita and Chuy, whose lives have become a series of events unfolding in repeat mode, much as was the case for Vladimir and Estragon in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot, on which Waiting is based.

Every night, the undocumented Chuy falls asleep on the same bench, is apprehended by the same ICE agents, and thrown into the same “cold horrible cage fit for a dog,” then manages to escape the following morning, and despite her best efforts, Chavalita seems incapable of doing anything to prevent the same thing from happening to her friend over and over again.

Like Vladimir and Estragon before them, Chavalita and Chuy find themselves waiting for a man about whom “much has been rumored but little is known.” (“They say Godínez is an older gentleman who was once lean, but has grown quite corpulent with age,” one of them explains to the other as if somehow this will help.)

As to whether Godínez will ever arrive, anyone familiar with the Beckett original knows from the get-go that though other characters may enter and exit, none of them will be the gentleman in question.

Comic relief does show up about fifteen minutes in with the arrival of a man Chavalita and Chuy first assume to be Godínez, but who turns out to be “Señor Piso Mojado” (Amir Levi), i.e. Mr. Wet Floor, whose “name is seen in thousands of hotels and luxurious office buildings across the country,” a self-declared literary agent who travels in a four-wheeled pushcart propelled by a “once promising poet” named Afortunada (Shanelle Darlene).

Child (Carolina J. Flores) then arrives in search of “Mr. Albert,” and though she’s the spitting image of the Child who told Chavalita to wait for Sr. Godínez, it turns out that was the other Child’s twin.

If the above synopsis has you scratching your head, I can’t promise that seeing Waiting in person will make it any easier to figure out. (Maybe you have to be a Beckett scholar for that to happen.)

Stilted absurdist statements (“We do not wear hats. We are therefore dogs.”) and Spanish words inserted at random (“You would still be a dog living in a beautiful casa at the beach.”) make it tough on the cast to deliver the caliber performances a more natural-sounding script would permit, though they do give it their all under Daphnie Sicre’s direction, and a fabulous Levi steals every scene he’s in, with Darlene delivering droll support.

At the very least, Waiting gives its playwright the chance to comment on the way America treats the undocumented. (“They use you when they want cheap work, and then when they are done with you, they snatch you up in the middle of the night to rid themselves of your presence.”)

Staging a 70-minute Waiting in the Atwater Village Theatre courtyard at 7:00 in July/August smartly eliminates the need for stage lighting, and Matt Richter keeps production and sound designs deliberately but effectively simple with Mylette Nora providing some just-right costumes.

Letitia Chang is stage manager. Raul Staggs is casting director. Natasha Kaiserman is associate producer.

I’ve never seen Waiting For Godot, and a plot synopsis suggests I might not grasp its meaning any better than I did this refreshingly briefer adaptation.

Still, having Playwrights’ Arena back in business in Atwater Village beats staying cooped up, and you’ll easily be back home by 9:00.

Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., Atwater Village.
www.PlaywrightsArena.org

–Steven Stanley
July 24, 2021
Photos: Kelly Stuart

 

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