BROKEN EGGS
Latino Chicago Theater Company
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Central to the tensions are the accommodations people have made between the grandeur that was Cuba–a grandeur nostalgia has elevated to mythical proportions–and the realities of a new life in the United States. Though it is now 1979, some attitudes stubbornly resist assimilation. At one end of the spectrum is Dona Manuela, drilling her granddaughter in the lore of the aristocracy: “You are a Cuban girl–never forget that.” Mimi responds, “No, Grandma. I was born in Canoga Park, California, and I’m a first-generation white Hispanic-American.” Undaunted, Manuela answers, “No, you’re not. Memorize what I have just told you.” Sonia, Manuela’s daughter and the mother of the bride, still clings to fond memories of her idyllic youth with a father who spoiled her–even after she was married, he would dispatch a servant to her house every morning with her favorite breakfast. Sonia has decided that at this gathering she will win back her ex-husband, Osvaldo, who had the audacity to divorce her and marry an independent-minded Argentinean, referred to by both families only as “the whore.” (Even Alfredo, Osvaldo’s down-to-earth father, wonders at his son’s marrying a woman he could simply have taken as a mistress–a wonderment shared by Osvaldo’s Valium-gobbling sister, Miriam.) At the opposite end of the battlefield are the children of Sonia and Osvaldo–Oscar, Lizette, and Mimi. The teenage Mimi is pregnant and still undecided whether to have an abortion, and Oscar flaunts his homosexuality with the fearlessness induced by a cocaine habit. Haunting this already volatile situation is the ghost of Miriam and Osvaldo’s brother, Pedro, a prodigal whose faults the Hernandez family treats in the old-fashioned manner–that is, by transparently and desperately denying them.
Breaking Eggs marks Teatro Vista’s debut in their spacious new quarters at the Greenview Arts Center. Sound designer Jeff Webb has created a witty score, ostensibly played by a band in an adjoining ballroom, which includes both “Guantanamera” and “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina.” Designers Rob Martin and Martha Sanders have come up with a hilariously ornate set as pink and melting as a mango Popsicle.
One often thinks of “ethnic” theater groups doing plays dealing with the social problems of the community or researching its mythological “roots.” Certainly there’s nothing wrong with these topics–for any theater–but it’s still refreshing to see Chicago’s two major Latino companies offering comedies for a change. After all, laughter cuts across the bounds of all languages and cultures.
