STAGE WEST
  • Home
  • About David
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Theatre Reviews
  • New Page

Theater reviews

Stage West

A rousing clash of culture and U.S. history

1/1/2012

0 Comments

 
​Juan Jose’s history lesson is the stuff dreams are made of. One moment he’s in the presence of Lewis & Clark and a bespectacled Sacagawea (he calls her “Saca-chihuahua”). The next moment he’s looking down the barrel of a hapless Ku Klux Klansman’s gun. Juan Jose’s dreaming transports him to a Japanese internment camp, to Woodstock and into the hot seat at a TV game show that will decide whether he becomes an American citizen. 
            American Night: The Ballad of Juan Jose, now at La Jolla Playhouse, is a madcap and frequently potent lesson in U.S. history. It’s a new work by Richard Montoya of the intrepid Chicano-Latino performance troupe Culture Clash, last seen at the Playhouse in 2006’s uproarious Zorro in Hell. Directed by Jo Bonney and propelled by a cast that includes Culture Clash’s Montoya and Hebert Siguenza and seven others, American Night bristles with commentary about the profiling of not only Mexicans but all minorities that Uncle Sam marginalizes and scrutinizes.
            Juan Jose (Rene Millan) is a young Mexican who yearns to be a U.S. citizen to make a better life for himself, his wife and their child. The dreams that visit him the night before he takes his citizenship exam cause him to think long and hard about his imagined better life. The episodic American Night is fast moving and rife with sight gags (a costumed bear, a sumo wrestler, a Teddy Roosevelt, a Ben Franklin and many more). It’s a jam-packed one-act that might have been two, but possibly director Bonney and Culture Clash felt an intermission would interrupt the flow. Tackling 200 years of American history is ambitious to say the least, and some sequences are more successful, and funnier, than others. That being said, when Montoya (who portrays a heavily armed revolutionary and a side-splitting Bob Dylan, among others) and Siguenza (comically brilliant as always) are on stage, everything seems to work.
            The use of a back screen for words and graphics enhance this trip back in time, and a musical finale led by Siguenza as one of our hammiest pop singers is just the right capper for this  American night, Juan Jose’s and ours.
 
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    David L. Coddon is a Southern California theater critic.

    Archives

    June 2025
    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    August 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    January 2016
    January 2015
    December 2014
    January 2014
    January 2013
    January 2012
    January 2011

    Categories

    All
    Theatre Review

David Coddon

About 
David Coddon Fiction
Theatre Reviews

Support

Contact
FAQ
Terms of Use
© COPYRIGHT 2017. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Home
  • About David
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Theatre Reviews
  • New Page