The four complex, authentic teen characters Alexis Scheer has created and the direction, performances, and design of Our Dear Dead Drug Lord’s West Coast Premiere at the Kirk Douglas Theatre are all so rave-worthy, it’s disappointing that the play’s gratuitously violent, deliberately unintelligible, and “WTF is that supposed to mean?” last twenty minutes are not.

The year is 2008, the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain are nearing their ends, and down in Miami, a trio of high school girls are holding this month’s meeting of the school’s Dead Leaders Club, originally set up to celebrate the lives of such revered figures as John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. but currently in hot water with school authorities for having picked Adolph Hitler as the WWII leader most worthy of study.

Not that their subsequent object of interest, Colombian drug lord/narcoterrorist Pablo Escobar, is any more likely to earn a seal of approval, but no matter. As far as the girls are concerned, Escobar meets club requirements, and so that’s whose picture they’ve hung in the spacious tree house where their monthly meetings are held.

Said tree house sits in the backyard of alpha club member “Pipe” (Lilian Rebel), whose upper-middle-class Cuban-American family has a McCain poster displayed prominently on their front lawn, much to the consternation of Pipe’s more liberal-leaning besties, Jewish American “Zoom” (Ashley Brooke) and Afro-Latina “Squeeze” (Samantha Miller), or with freshly arrived new member “Kit” (Coral Peña), whose single mom hails from the very country drug mogul Escobar called home.

The girls’ lighthearted, sassy teen banter notwithstanding, each has experienced traumatic loss (Squeeze’s father killed himself, Pipe blames herself for her younger sister’s accidental death, and Kit’s mother’s violent ex-boyfriend still haunts her daughter’s dreams.)

It’s perhaps that last bit of information that has the overactively imaginative Pipe, Zoom, and Squeeze convinced that the club’s newest member just might be Pablo Escobar’s illegitimate daughter, and therefore the perfect conduit to summoning up his ghost with the help of a Ouija board, candles, rocks, and other séance-friendly paraphernalia.

Playwright Scheer drops clues early on of her intention to “go there,” beginning with a scene in which one of the girls sacrifices (i.e., stabs or strangles) a stray cat they’ve captured, and though we never see the feline in question, I wouldn’t be surprised if that alone might prompt animal lovers to decide Our Dear Dead Drug Lord won’t be their cup of tea.

Still, even that bit of sadistic malice pales in comparison to the moment later on in the play when we’re forced to witness an onstage wire-hanger abortion.

And we still haven’t gotten to a Grand Guignol finale that’s about as shocking and disturbing as grand finales get, and one whose message (“Being a girl means I’m born to be bad”) may go at least a smidgen too far, particularly as staged.

Not to mention that Scheer’s decision to shut out presumably at least half of the audience, i.e. those not fluent in Spanish, from understanding what’s being said in the play’s final scene proves questionable at best.

And what a shame this is considering how smart and funny and clever and darkly entertaining Our Dear Dead Drug has been up until then, and how magnificently it’s been performed by four up-and-coming young actresses who pass effortlessly as teens, performances finely honed by ace director Lindsay Allbaugh.

(Acting kudos too Aliyah Bella Camacho and Juan Francisco Villa in smaller but no less effectively rendered roles.)

I can’t rave highly enough about the production design Our Dear Dead Drug Lord has been given by Center Theatre Group in association with IAMA Theatre Company, beginning with François-Pierre Couture’s spectacular, meticulously appointed, larger-than-life tree house set.

Azra King-Abadi’s vibrant lighting and sound designer Veronika Vorel’s edgy musical underscoring soar to new heights as the production nears its brutal finale, and Elena Flores’s costumes are just as topnotch.

Last but not least, movement/intimacy coordinator Veronica Sofía Burt has choreographed a dance sequence as hilarious as it is intricately designed and performed.

Marcedês L. Clanton is production stage manager. Lydia Runge and Brandon Cheng are assistant stage manager. Casting is by Jordan Bass, CSA.

Perhaps nothing disappoints this reviewer more than when a play that’s been up until now a winner goes south in its final scenes. Though performances, direction, and design more than merit a standing ovation, Our Dear Dead Drug Lord as a whole does not.

Kirk Douglas Theatre, 9820 Washington Blvd., Culver City.
www.centertheatregroup.org

–Steven Stanley
August 27, 2023
Photos: Craig Schwartz Photography

Tags: Center Theatre Group, IAMA Theatre Company, Kirk Douglas Theatre, Los Angeles Theater Review