The only possible way you could think that Marisela Treviño Orta’s world premiere December is “a love years in the making,” as the subtitle proclaims, is if you have forgotten all those Hallmark Movies of the Week from decades ago.
You know the ones. A couple meets cute, there are hidden sparks, but no one makes a move. Years pass. They still spark when they meet after marriages or broken engagements, yet no one makes a move. Then, just before the evening news is to begin, they re-connect either because some incurable disease has descended on one of them, or someone sees the beautiful clear light of true love. Clinch and Fade-Out.
This is exactly what happens in December, the most predictable (dare I say, boring) play of the season. The only conflict is Will they or Won’t they? And when? You know when, only at the end.
Well, the “when” occurs after interminable poetry readings. Yes, poetry. When was the last time you heard the name Sara Teasdale invoked in a play? Or heard her work? How about Robert Frost? e e cummings? Wallace Stevens? Pablo Neruda? All indelible poets, for sure, masters of their art. But reading them in the midst of a drama sucks the life out of it. It’s like watching someone hacking away on a computer in a sci-fi film, or a writer writing. It’s a horribly bad choice, bad for drama, bad for continuity, bad for audience participation in your story. In this play, the lights dim to cool blue, a lonely cello plays in the background, and we sit there in the dark having to listen to what amounts to filler. Get on with it, we cry.
Orta loves poetry; she has an MFA in Poetry from the University of San Francisco. But the physical act of reading to each other is mighty shaky drama. It’s not really drama at all. It’s a clunky device, filling time until these two get together. We have to wait two hours for that to happen, when we know from the beginning that this is what is inevitable. Talk about coitus interruptus.
I will not dull you with details, they hardly matter in this play, but Carolina is a poetry teacher, Benjamin is her student. He has the hots for her. We know that from the beginning of the play set in 1999, when he waits until the college year-end party is over to make a tentative move on her. Carolina is 20 years older. They read poetry. They dance. He is rebuffed. Eight years later, he comes back. She is married to a nerd she doesn’t really love. They read more poetry. They dance. He is rebuffed. 20 years later, after she is divorced as is he, they dance to Roberta Flack’s sultry rendition of “The First Time Ever I Saw His Face,” and true love blossoms. Cut to the TV news program.
Why of all plays from the 2023 Alley All New Festival did the powers-that-be select this one for promotion? Remember, this series over the years brought us The Amerikin, Syncing Ink, Cleo, Describe the Night, Quack, Pictures from Home, The World is Not Silent, The Emporium, The Janeiad, and, the best of the best, Born With Teeth. Not all were worthy of the Alley gloss, but all had more power and finesse than this pale pretender.
The cast is very fine and makes the best suds they can out of a script that is warm dishwater. Patricia Duran and Leandro Salazar (more of him, please) play the younger avatars, while Maggie Bofill (more of her, please) and Luis Vega play the mature avatars. This is a compliment, but Bofill has the style of a young Tallulah Bankhead. Her voice is husky and dark, and she has a way of making Orta’s clunky lines sound resonant and meaningful. She’s a very natural actor, that hint of smoldering fire beneath the cool surface, and a graceful stage presence. She belongs up there on stage. And though her transformation to a somewhat-cougar is unaccounted for in the script, she makes it all believable.
This intimate play should be set in the smaller downstairs Neuhaus space. It wouldn’t make the poetry readings any more acceptable, but it wouldn’t be dwarfed by that Clifford Odets-style realism with running water in the sink and kitchen cabinets out of reach.
A world premiere is a wondrous thing; you never know what you will get. Will it blow you away or stupefy? Remain in your memory or be gone with the wind as soon as you leave the theater? We don’t want any new play to be a failure, that’s not what we’re here for. We want exciting new works that stimulate our senses, drive us wild, astonish us, as impresario Diaghilev said to a young Cocteau about to make his Ballets Russes debut. What we don’t want is predictable. That we can see on television.
December: a love years in the making. continues through February 2 at 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, 7 p.m. Sundays, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; and 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays at Alley Theatre, 615 Texas. For more information, call 713-220-5700 or visit alleytheatre.org. $38-$100.
