It’s so interesting when a play’s description isn’t what you end up taking away from it. When you’re unsure if what you feel is the show’s most compelling aspect was something the playwright even intended.
Such was the case watching the world premiere of That Drive Thru Monterey by playwright Matthew Paul Olmos, now getting a tenderly graceful production at Stages.
Publicity about the play calls it a love story. And it is. Young, adorably nerdy, Mexican-American 20-somethings Monterey (Mo to her family) and Maximilliano are in love. It’s 1971 in East Los Angeles, and the pair meet at their part-time post office jobs. Mo is studying to be a nurse and Maximilliano isn’t sure what he wants to do, but he knows he wants to make Mo proud.
I’ll be honest, I’m generally immune to this kind of simply sweet, aren’t they cute kind of love stories. The kind that made everyone sigh ahhhh as the couple fumble without conflict towards true love. But even my dark heart couldn’t resist them thanks to the talents of Sophia Marcelle and Matthew Martinez.
With every push up of her glasses, blooming smile and increasing confidence/agency in first love, Marcelle easily attaches our affection to Mo. Playing goofy is a slippery proposition, but Martinez is utterly endearing. Whether paraphrasing Mission Impossible (this letter will destruct in 5…4…3…) or quaking to his core when Mo finally kisses him, he’s all teddy bear squishiness in every way.
The show is also described as a love letter to family. And it is that too.
Mo is extremely close with her’s yet interestingly, Olmos introduces us to only some of her family. Mo’s mother, Lupe, has no time for frills, emotionally or otherwise; she’s got 4 kids and a house to run. Did you like Dad when you first met, Mo asks her. “Like him?” Lupe asks. “You were born, weren’t you?”
Brusqueness aside, it’s obvious Lupe cares deeply for her family and played with depth by Marissa Castillo, she’s a character that expands beyond what is written on the page. A note here about Castillo and this production. That Drive Thru Monterey is the first full production to come out of the Stages’ Sin Muros Latinx Theater Festival. Castillo is not just a performer but also works passionately as the co-founder of a Latinx theater Company, giving an important voice to her community. So it was especially meaningful to see her included in this cast.
Mo’s older sister, Lydia, may be the pretty and popular one, but that doesn’t stop her from being her baby sister’s biggest cheerleader and shoulder when she needs it. From helping Mo dress for dates to sizing up Maximilliano to make sure he passes muster, Lydia is protector, confidant and emotional caretaker. And Elissa Cuellar, strutting in ’70s-style tight pants, cropped top, flowing hair and clompy heels brings all the ’70s liberated female bravado this character requires. Cuellar is an actress who can own the stage without stealing it unnecessarily. One that shows confidence and compassion in equal measure.
Interestingly, the men in Mo’s family are mentioned but not seen. Two younger brothers are occasionally alluded to. More puzzling is that her father, a man she describes as her best listener and her most beloved, isn’t cast in the show. Instead, Olmos has characters speak to an invisible father, making it obvious what he might be saying back to them.
Perhaps Olmos wanted the only men in his show to be the ones who interact with Mo romantically, which brings us to the assertion that the show is a treatise on masculinity. Sure, there’s enough of that to be true.
Mo’s father is the ideal from which she judges all other men. Maximilliano is self-admittedly “soft”. He’s not a player or a fighter or a machismo type of man. He’ll pay for that in this play. Timoteo (a seductive Antonio Lasanta) is another of Mo’s suitors. One that runs counter to the other men in her life. One that disrupts rather than enhances. All these men affect Mo deeply, rubbing their brand of masculinity on her, like it or not.
Finally, it is a story about a Mexican-American family living in Vietnam-era USA. Olmos lets the political ramifications of this simmer in the background. There’s a draft. Concern about race hierarchy. Lydia is proudly political, a Shirley Chisholm supporter, miffed that neither her sister nor Maximilliano is active in the progressive fight.
But this is just a low simmer at best. Olmos mentions it for context, but never really goes anywhere with it. This is a personal, not political story he’s telling.
So, what do I think this play is really about? Or at least what I gravitated most to?
It shows up most obviously in the light magical realism Olmos injects into his play in the form of action freezes that allow Mo to step out of the scene and provide context/clarity to what she was really thinking or feeling at the time. What she wished she had said. How things played out in time. Sometimes other characters join her in these freezes, where they can discuss truths that were too difficult to face at the time. Or to ask her questions they never got the chance to.
It’s here that we see things weren’t quite as shiny as the story suggests. Not quite as cute. Or perfect. Or, in some cases, distinctly not perfect.
“Did I imagine you were that good?” Mo asks Maximilliano in one of those freezes.
This is my takeaway. Watching That Drive Thru Monterey, you get a sense that the good people in Mo’s life are too good. Perfect even. Unrealistically so. The bad are 100 percent evil with no shades of grey. If taken at face value, it’s easy to mistake Olmos’ play as Pollyanna meets doomsday.
But consider Mo’s question. Were you that good? We all edit our memories, keeping the good, hardening the bad. Forgetting the complex. We allow the past to be a construct serving us what we need. As Proust said, “Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of how things were.”
Among all the other things it is, at its heart, That Drive Thru Monterey is a wishful memory play. One that’s been washed, wrung and pinned to the line by Olmos. He’s told us in interviews that the play is inspired by his mother’s actual life and first love. Did she provide the too-shiny version, or did Olmos? We don’t know. But we know that he’s clever enough to show us, if we want to see it, that the shine is merely a patina of memory. One that we’re all guilty of.
Either that, or he wrote a much less compelling play. I’m going with door No. 1.
That Drive Thru Monterey runs through June 7 at Stages at the Gordy, 800 Rosine. For more information, call 713-527-0123 or visit stageshouston.com. $30-$89.
