Play Review: ‘American Mariachi’
By Jesse M.
As the lights dimmed, chills follow as we hear the sound of the violin playing from an ominous character dressed in a black dress who circles the stage before a long, white veil, fastened to the top of the ceiling, drops before the audience’s eyes.
The play “American Mariachi” is a culturally important, moving tale that displays beautiful music, beautiful lighting, and deep storytelling.
The play written by Jose Cruz Gonzalez and directed by Jose Luis Valenzuela and is playing at the Los Angeles Theater Company from May 2nd to June 9.
The play, while not the biggest production, takes advantage of its smaller setting and uses the lighting to its advantage.
The play starts with the main conflict where we see the mother character, Amalia, affected by dementia. She slowly loses grasp of her family and has visions of Tia Carmen, who follows her around with her violin.
Amalia, played by Ruth Livier, has a disagreement with her husband Federico, played by Sal Lopez.
Federico, who is still playing in a mariachi even into old age, gets mad over a record and smashes it.
The couple’s performance is believable throughout.
However, the actresses Elia Saldana and Esperanza America, who play Lucha and Boli, give painfully cringey performances that sometimes make the play hard to watch.
The story follows Lucha, who is Amalia and Federico’s daughter, as she and her friend Boli begin to recruit members to join her mariachi to make her mother happy again by playing the song contained within the broken record.
But all of this is done in secret.
She recruits characters in a cutesy fun way where we see the struggles that woman had in the past, specifically the 1970s, being controlled by husbands, as in the case of Isabel, or outcasts like Gabby and those who are carefree like Soyla.
The five women struggle to start up, almost giving up when Lucha decides to go to her “Nino Mino” played by Geoffrey Rivas, who helps them form a proper band.
His character begins to add tension between Lucha and her dad, sparking a key to the past where she wants to be seen as a musician and her father won’t let her, but also revealing a darker secret that adds to the anger and pain between the two men.
Finally, Lucha reveals her band towards the end with a beautiful serenade of music where Federico’s band joins with Lucha’s band and performs a beautiful piece of music.
The set production keeps things simple: they have these small props and miniature tables to set a scene which makes it fun to watch because you can see they’re having fun moving things around.
The lights were also spectacular with the colors moving the characters and making them darker or lighter like with Tia Carmen’s looming figure, they would have ghastly lights follow her around.
The play is a must-watch for families that are Latino/x, showing the power of our beautiful culture, showing our love for family and what we would do for them, and also showing our colors as a culture with the music that moves us.
“American Mariachi” tells a story that surely many can relate to.
