RANCHO OBSCURO
Rancho Obscuro is not a play. The plot is so rambling and incoherent as to be virtually nonexistent. If there was an overall statement being made, I failed to grasp it. The only thing this production has going for it, aside from the occasionally witty lines, are those characterizations.
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And those characterizations are delightful. Though the actors have varied amounts of skill, all of the characters are wonderfully bizarre and quite finely tuned. Phil Lortie plays Francis Pie, a kind of hit man who relies on seduction and innuendo to get his way. He’s a big, dumb, pretty Texan with a penchant for Moon Pies and bullying. Francis is hired by Maxwell (played by the quirky, skillful Greg Kotis), the manager of the bank where all the action takes place. Maxwell is straight out of a 30s movie, an updated combination of Snidely Whiplash and Mr. Drysdale from The Beverly Hillbillies. Always plotting and manipulating, Maxwell is the ultimate banker, speaking German with overseas colleagues to the delight and mystification of his staff.
There are absurdities galore in this circus of weirdos, but only one hint at meaning. Just before intermission, Jenkins starts philosophizing about death and rebirth. Saint Augustine had a theory, he tells us, that good souls become very small when they die, and go to a tiny little house where they sit and do as little as possible until they get put back on earth (which is very quickly, since God wants more good souls on earth). But bad people, he tells us, go to a huge hall where they have big parties all the time, and stay there for a very long time. This place is called Rancho Obscuro. Jenkins has a theory similar to Saint Augustine’s, except for one thing: Saint Augustine’s theory presupposes that we are all alive. In Jenkins’s theory, we are already dead, and this world is Rancho Obscuro.
