MOJAVE
Folio Theatre Company
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In the old days the west’s cruel adversaries were disease, warring Indians, and locusts. These were adversaries a man could battle, and when he won, he was a better man for the struggle. But in Mojave, which explores the post-Vietnam west, the Aztec City of Gold–Mexico City–is choking in a cloud of car exhaust, John Deere tractors cost $500,000, and babies born near toxic dumping grounds have no heads. In Mojave modern society is the adversary, and it’s trying its damnedest to emasculate these men.
The play is a series of vignettes adroitly performed by an ensemble of eight men: Daniel J. Cunningham, Bill Drew, Darren Kennedy, Juan Luco, Marc Muehleip, F. David Roth, Jim Winfrey, and Tim Kivel. It’s an intimate play that fills the cozy basement theater at Cafe Voltaire and, with a few songs and the power of imagination, transforms it into a rodeo, an unemployment line, or the VA hospital.
