Playwright: Multiple company members. At: Teatro Luna at The Viaduct, 3111 N. Western Ave. Tickets: www.teatroluna.org; $15-$25. Runs through: Dec. 18
Teatro Luna has traveled a great distance in a decade, not merely from Pilsen to the mid-North Side, but from female-only solo monologues to fully scripted plays and the inclusion of men—where appropriate—in the troupe’s work. Many company members have traveled even further as immigrants to the United States. With Crossed, Teatro Luna presents a sketch revue built on a theme, in this case the perils of border crossings for immigrants or those perceived as such. Alas, I felt both the format and the theme were retrograde, and that I’ve already been there and done that with Teatro Luna.
There are several reasons for my reaction, I think, the first being that the six performers (several of whom also are among the show’s writers) lacked snap and energy the night I saw Crossed at its second performance. Also, the staging isn’t effective. The main stage at The Viaduct—once home to the House Theatre of Chicago—is dark, cavernous and acoustically awful, thus not well-suited for an intimate and fast revue. It doesn’t help, either, to split the audience into two halves facing each other across the stage. When actors turned their backs to me, their diction floated up to the rafters and not to my ears.
However, the sketch material itself, although often amusing, was too familiar. Opening and closing in an airport, the scenes conveyed how people with darker skin or foreign-sounding surnames, or with relatives in other countries, are subject to greater scrutiny and even downright suspicion upon leaving or re-entering the United States, and how airport authorities indulges in mindless “rules” and never-explained excesses. More, the revue explains that Spanish-speaking peoples are of different nationalities and cultures and not all alike, which has been a favorite Teatro Luna topic since Day One. The show’s supposed focus on immigration stereotypes (code words for Mexican) isn’t always well-delineated.
It’s not that the themes and ideas lack truth or pertinence—regretfully, they remain both true and pertinent—but they are not new ideas or theatrical subjects for Teatro Luna and its audience (at least its longtime audience). Now, many original founders of Teatro Luna have moved on, several of them to distinguished local and national careers, so it’s not surprising that younger, newer Lunaticas may be reinventing the wheel as they develop their artistic chops and tap personal experiences. Before the show, the director announced Crossed as a work-in-progress. Taking that at face value, what the troupe needs to do is find a congenial space for the show (perhaps their new home at the old Live Bait Theatre), tighten its focus, ruthlessly edit out repetitious material and then perform Crossed at TSA training sessions and Republican presidential debates!