ONE OF THE GOOD ONES


Fireworks ignite when a well-to-do Hispanic-American couple’s 22-year-old daughter brings home the man of her dreams in Gloria Calderón Kellett’s One Of The Good Ones, a laugh-packed, conversation-starting 21st-century Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner now getting the classiest and crowd-pleasingest of World Premieres at the Pasadena Playhouse.

U.S.-born Enrique and Ilana Gomez (Carlos Gomez and Lana Parrilla) are living the American Dream in the multimillion-dollar Pasadena home where they raised recent college-grad Yoli (Isabella Gomez).

However, things today are going to get rather a bit bumpier than usual as the couple prepare to welcome the arrival of the very first serious boyfriend their daughter has brought home to meet the folks.

No wonder then that the menopausal Ilana is sweating a bit more than usual, nerves exacerbated when flower delivery man Pedro (Santino Jimenez) shows up at the door, forcing her to pull out the few words of Spanish she knows, that is until her bilingual daughter comes to her rescue.

Ilana’s roots may be in Mexico and Puerto Rico, but unlike her American-born Cuban-Spanish husband and their bilingual daughter, English is the only language she knows, the result of grandparents and parents who wanted Ilana to grow up “all-American,” a decision she and her husband hoped to make up for by raising a daughter fluent in both languages.

And if Yoli’s “serious boyfriend” should one day turn out to be more than that, Enrique and Ilana can rest assured their grandchildren will be bilingual too since the young man they’re about to meet is Mexico-born Marcos Cruz (Nico Greetham).

Imagine their surprise when the whitest of white suitors shows up on their doorstep and they learn to their dismay that his last name is spelled Cruise (like Tom), not Cruz (like Ted), and that though Marcos speaks fluent Spanish, the result of having lived in Mexico till age seven, and considers himself Mexican, his parents are Bostonians of Germanic-British-Polish heritage who moved south of the border sometime before his birth.

And if Marcos’s whiteness weren’t already enough to push his girlfriend’s parents’ buttons, the young whippersnapper immediately starts in schooling Enrique on the history of the piñata he’s brought along with him as an ice-breaking gift.

I mean, how dare he!

Thus begins eighty-five real-time minutes of the most laugh-getting family drama the Pasadena Playhouse has hosted in years as playwright Kellett gets her characters (and audiences) thinking about what it means to be Latino (or Latine or Latinx, the characters themselves can’t decide which adjective they prefer), and what it means to be American.

And though One Of The Good Ones revolves around una familia latina, I’m guessing that it will resonate with anyone with a bicultural background no matter where their forebears hail from.

I do have a few nits to pick with Kellett’s script. Given Marcos’s parentage, a later arrival to the US (as a high school or college student) would bolster his self-identity as Mexican. Also, without reading the script, audiences may have no idea how Enrique has come to know about an upcoming family “event” before the secret is revealed. Finally, an unexpected last-minute arrival seems improbable at best in today’s technology-dependent world.

Still, these quibbles hardly detract from just how entertaining and thought-provoking One Of The Good Ones is, Kellett’s years showrunning the 2017 reboot of Norman Lear’s One Day At A Time paying off bigtime on the Pasadena Playhouse stage.

Kimberly Senior elicits five of the richest and most engaging performances in town, from (Carlos) Gomez’s uber-macho but secretly soft-hearted Enrique, to the stunning Parrilla’s Real Housewives-ready Ilana, to (Isabella) Gomez’s sparklingly spunky Yoli, to Greetham’s adorably pedantic Marcos, to Jimenez’s delightfully droll Pedro.

And what a production design the Pasadena Playhouse has given the fivesome to play on, scenic designer Tanya Orellana’s stylish Pasadena mansion and Denitsa Bilznakova’s character-defining costumes gorgeously lit by Jaymi Lee Smith, with Jeff Gardner and Andrea Allmond providing a salsa-infused sound design along the way.

Casting is by Ryan Bernard Tymensky, CSA. Abel Garcia and Anna LaMadrid are understudies.

Rachel Lee Flesher is fight and intimacy coordinator. David S. Frankin is stage manager. Brad Enlow is technical director and production supervisor.

Jenny Slattery is associate producer. Davidson & Choy Publicity are publicists.

Fans of Gloria Calderón Kellett’s TV hits know how gifted she is at shining a spotlight on lives rarely given major roles on stage or screen, and doing so with humor, compassion, and joy. In One Of The Good Ones, Pasadena Playhouse has another surefire smash on its hands.

Pasadena Playhouse, 39 South El Molino Ave., Pasadena.
www.pasadenaplayhouse.org

–Steven Stanley
March 17, 2024
Photos: Jeff Lorch

Visit www.theatreinla.com/nowplayingrs.php for a review roundup of what’s now playing in theaters around Los Angeles.

 

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