THEATER: A PROVOCATIVE “BRAINPEOPLE” TRANS FORM’ AN UNEVEN RIDE
By Kerry Reid special to the Tribune
Chicago Tribune
,0,1804978.story
Nov 18 2010
“Brainpeople”
Jose Rivera, the poet laureate of apocalyptic visions, weaves domestic
sorrow and dystopic disasters together in “Brainpeople,” now receiving
its Midwest premiere with UrbanTheater Company. Those familiar with
Rivera’s earlier work, especially 1992’s “Marisol,” will find familiar
threads in this story of a Los Angeles torn apart at the socioeconomic
seams, where the haves hire private armies to protect them while the
have-nots drown their sorrows at “government-approved” bars as the
city goes up in smoke around them. But where “Marisol” depicted a
hellish New York where gods and angels do battle, “Brainpeople” is
about the personal wars playing in a never-ending loop in our psyches.
Mayannah (Marilyn Camacho), a wealthy Puerto Rican woman who lives
in an armed private residence somewhere in the hills of L.A., has
invited two desperately poor women, Ani and Rosemary, to join her
in a commemorative anniversary feast — though what they’re eating
and its symbolic significance to Mayannah’s life isn’t immediately
clear. At first, one suspects that we’re in the territory of “The Most
Dangerous Game,” or possibly Hannibal Lecter. But Mayannah doesn’t
want to literally consume her guests — she sees them as the matrix
for an impossible marriage between redemption and vengeance, and the
tiger meat on the menu is only the beginning of the nightmares and
revelations in store.
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Rivera’s script packs a lot into 80 minutes. Ani (Kate Brown), the
seemingly sane one in the trio, carries ancestral memories of the
Armenian genocide (her name comes from an abandoned Armenian city), as
well as anguish from a failed love affair that isn’t what it seems at
first. Rosemary (Amanda Powell) gives Sybil a run for her money in the
multiple-personalities department — residual damage from sexual abuse.
And Mayannah, whose house is packed with lurid images of the
Crucifixion, is wracked with survivor’s guilt from her own childhood
losses.
This last supper of lost souls could easily become overcooked in its
own fever-dream juices, but director Marti Lyons finds a balance
between offhand humor (early on, Ani says of Mayannah’s lair with
deadpan accuracy, “This place is basically creepy”) and potent images
of death. Mayannah, ruminating on cremation, asks “How many times a
day do we take in the evaporated dreams of other people?”
Camacho’s black-clad, cloudy-haired Mayannah stalks the gloomy dining
room (beautifully rendered by Jorge Felix’s set and Richard Ebeling’s
lights) like a vengeful bruja, but she peels the character back bit
by bit, revealing her lifelong pain with mesmerizing skill.
As Ani, Brown (fighting incipient laryngitis on the night I attended)
anchors the character in merciless emotional self-flagellation. Powell
has the more thankless task — her shape-shifting between various
incarnations of Rosemary feels contrived, and the device itself a
bit shopworn.
But by the end, all three find their footing in Rivera’s darkling
world that hangs by a slender thread of hope over an abyss of despair.
Through Dec. 12 at Batey Urbano, 2620 W. Division St.; at 312-239-8783
or urbantheaterchicago.org
From: A. Papazian
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/theater/ct-ott-1119-on-the-fringe-20101116