Maybe I've been hanging around the wrong squats, but in my experience, anarcho-communists aren't exactly famous for their humor. Not so for the anarchists in WET's production of Guillermo CalderĂłn's B, a brisk and darkly humorous play about the practical and philosophical problems that arise when you decide you want to blow up a bank in order to dismantle capitalism.
The show runs through January 28 at 12th Ave Arts, and it's worth seeing if you like good acting, long lyrical monologues, and really stellar stage design.
WET has always foregrounded innovative and meaningful set design in their productions. (Remember that pixel wall from The Nether? Or the way they used cardboard boxes in Teh Internet?) That's been especially true over the last few years, and it's particularly true for this show.
Lex Marcos (who did the set) and Tristan Roberson (who did the lights) created a completely white cube of a living room decked out with white, modern furniture. The room works as a metaphor for a lot of things—the carceral nature of white supremacy in which the two Latina characters operate, the absolutist political rhetoric the characters employ, etc.—but the minimalist white cube mostly works to make the hypercolored props pop, allowing you to see party balloons, birthday gifts, Skittles as garish, sinister, and unwholesome products of capitalism. Which they are. Except for Skittles. Which are great. Even cows like them.
In these environs, three anarchists with three very different motivations plot to plant a bomb near a bank. The man, Jose Miguel (played by Craig Peterson), is a violent anarchist bomb-maker who's grown disillusioned with nonviolent approaches to class warfare. He accuses these young activists—Alejandra (played by Sophie Franco) and Marcela (played by Klarissa Marie Robles)—of setting off less lethal "noise bombs" merely because they want to lead "fascinating lives." He wants to convince them to join the dark side and do some real damage.
Of course, really Jose just wants to chalk up a win for once in his life, and to stroke his own ego with increased media coverage. And these women want to bomb a bank for their own reasons, too. Marcela is looking to avenge the death of her friend, who was killed by a cop. Alejandra seeks something like general freedom from societal oppression, and also a sense of true belonging. Plus, she's watched the cops lock up her friends her whole life, and she's sick of that.
While their personal motivations remain a constant topic of conversation, their political motivations shift to suit each character's immediate needs. There's no ideological purity, here, and CalderĂłn makes light of such a notion by having the characters go off on long rants you can tell they don't really believe. No terrorist wants to admit that he's blowing up banks because he considers himself a personal failure, so he wraps up his grievance in political rhetoric and then suddenly he's got friends.
The idea that terrorists are just making the personal political to settle old scores feels a little dusty. We get it: terrorists are human beings, too, and if we want to end terrorism of all kinds we need humanitarian solutions and not militaristic interventions.
There is an interesting conversation to be had about the merits of literally smashing the state, though, and this is an especially good time to be talking about that subject. But CalderĂłn's characters aren't really having that conversation. Moreover, the conversation these characters are having takes place over the course of several long, florid monologues that considerably weigh down the second half of the play, though some of the lyrical flights are quite beautiful.
That said, the actors carry you through. I've been down on WET's casts in the past (remember the mediocre acting in Straight White Men and The Motherfucker With the Hat?), but the performances I saw on opening night were sophisticated, powerful, and just plain good across the board.
Watching Peterson transform his character from a hilariously stilted, robotic revolutionary into a cold-blooded killer was fascinating to watch. Franco projected a magnetic intensity that made me want to dress up in jackboots and camo and maybe go to jail with her, knowing, of course, that the cops can't imprison our MINDS. And Robles expertly paired goofiness with mopey-ness to create an unlikely insurgent who cracked me up and garnered the most sympathy from me.
But the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress goes to Shermona Mitchell for her portrayal of Carmen, a nosey next-door neighbor who serves as Calderón's Shakespearean fool—a woman who knows all but claims to know nothing. Her timing and delivery were unimpeachably great, and her ability to toggle quickly between contrasting tones allowed her to land jokes that might sound dumb on the page. She could, for instance, go from consoling and loving to frat-boy-raunchy over the course of a single sentence. She was incredible, and the audience took notice. After a particularly hilarious bit, they screamed and clapped as she exited the stage. Nobody else got that kind of treatment, but they deserved it, too. All due credit to director Jay O'Leary, who found the humor in every scene and brought out some real talent from these actors.
