SPIC-O-RAMA: A DYSFUNCTIONAL COMEDY
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Or will it? The characters in Spic-O-Rama (directed and cowritten by Peter Askin) are Latino, like their creator. Because Leguizamo specializes in offbeat, quirky, even downright weird people who are also Hispanic–Spic-O-Rama depicts six members of a Colombian-Puerto Rican family in Queens, New York, gathered for the wedding of their eldest son–he’s sometimes accused of perpetuating Hispanic stereotypes of thugs, bimbos, and self-degrading Anglo wannabes. I don’t remember anyone complaining about white working-class stereotypes when Lily Tomlin’s little-girl character Edith Ann talked about her father blowing his factory-job check at the corner bar; what makes people worry about stereotypes in this case is that Leguizamo’s street freaks aren’t offset by many “regular” Hispanics in mainstream media. And Leguizamo himself is the first to point out that a white actor of his range–which is remarkable–would have a much higher career profile than he does. So Spic-O-Rama (like its off-Broadway predecessor Mambo Mouth) is something of a challenge: dig my talent, then tell me racism isn’t holding me back.
The challenge is implicit in the title–which is flung at us by little Miguelito Gigante, youngest of several brothers, who begins the evening by introducing us to his family in a schoolroom show-and-tell session. Recalling the time some other neighborhood kids called him a spic, he retaliates by inventing words that transform the slur into a triumphal proclamation: “I’m spictacular, spictorious . . . ” Despite such bravado, the attitude Leguizamo’s characters have toward their place in the family of man–and the family of Gigante–is best summed up by the pop record whose refrain repeats throughout the show: “It’s a thin line between love and hate.” (Credit superstar dance-club deejay Jellybean Benitez with the slick sound design–and while we’re at it, Ken Bowen with the kinetic lighting and Chauncey Street Productions with the tabloid-style video sequences in which outsiders comment on the characters.) Nine-year-old Miggy worships his oldest brother, Crazy Willie, a street hoodlum whose one claim to fame is his Desert Storm service (“We shot people who look just like us but with towels on their heads”) and who is actually planning to marry his longtime girlfriend–despite her resistance. (“Why can’t she lower her standards? I did.”)
