SANTIAGO
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Santiago presents several interwoven stories of love and violence set in the besieged Chilean city. A woman identified only as “She” (Laurie Martinez), married to a government torturer (Michael Ramirez), picks up a stranger (Horacio Sanz) in a movie theater, and after a seemingly obligatory sexual encounter promptly falls in love. It’s clear her lover is in danger, but it’s hard to tell who poses the greater threat: the woman’s jealous husband, who comments offhandedly that he must often revive his victims before he can continue to torture them to their death, or the woman herself, who admits that she staged her own rape at home with a young boy, knowing it would be videotaped by her husband’s surveillance cameras. Her intention is to throw suspicion away from her lover, but the boy is killed.
Episodes like these are casually mentioned throughout the play, creating the imaginary world of Garcia’s Santiago. And during the blackouts between scenes we hear voice-overs describing various coups and guerrilla attacks. By never actually portraying this violence onstage, Garcia makes it all the more terrifying in imagination. But these horrors can also be absurd: the woman’s comatose brother (Ralph Miranda), who happened to be on a bus that was randomly attacked by a guerrilla group, somehow has come to be revered in the town as a martyr, his misfortune turned into an act of heroism.
The cast are quite adept at bringing out the play’s dark undertones, and they never pull back from the truly horrific moments. They seem less comfortable, however, playing the humor, which is crucial: the playwright’s vision seems grotesque rather than somber. For example, the woman’s comatose brother is “bathed” by dumping a pitcher of water on him as he lies on his cot. In this production that darkly satiric edge has largely been muffled, and as a result the play never seems to find a point of view that will tie everything together.
