Guinea Pig Solo
Bailiwick Repertory
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Leonard’s play is the more visceral and far-reaching, perhaps because of its historical immediacy–after all, there’s no end in sight for our current conflict while the first gulf war was over relatively quickly. But Leonard’s world is also much darker and grittier than the magic-realist universe Rivera creates. In our first glimpse of Leonard’s soldier–the isolated, enraged Jose Solo, who’s returned to Spanish Harlem–he’s a shadow behind a scrim, running as fast as he can on a treadmill and intoning “love and be loved.” Sure, the image is more than a bit heavy-handed, but it’s also very effective at setting the tone for this primal scream of a show.
Jose’s desire for an uncomplicated, perfect love is as universal as the desire for a good war. But since neither exists, the quest can leave a lot of victims along the way. Yet Leonard’s play is far from a one-note antiwar polemic; he also focuses on the unrealistic romantic expectations fostered by pop culture. Jose’s affection for pop standards comes up a few times–Sammy Davis Jr.’s rendition of “Blame It on My Youth” effectively underscores a couple of scenes, and Charlie, the grizzled cop who takes on Jose’s rehabilitation as a personal project, tells him that “it’s a Louis Armstrong world if you want it to be.” Charlie considers accommodation to reality the key to finding that wonderful world, but he fails to see all of Jose–he calls him Joe “because you’re in America now.”
Ivan Vega as Benito is a careful mixture of wounded pride and a stolid sense of duty, and his charismatic performance as the moon is charming. Marsha Villanueva makes a dynamic, sympathetic Gabriela, and the humorous interactions between Nicole Adelman’s Cat and John Byrnes’s Coyote are well choreographed.
Where: Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division
When: Through 4/10: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3:30 PM
