STAGE WEST: "Somewhere Over the Border" at Cygnet Theatre

Left to right: Fernando Vega, Vanessa Orozco and Luis Sherlinee in "Somewhere Over the Border." Karli Cadel Photography

            The crucial moment in Cygnet Theatre’s production of the musical “Somewhere Over the Border” isn’t musical at all: It’s when a frightened young woman, hiding in the back of a truck, holds her breath and lies dead-still while immigration/border officers inspect the vehicle. Reina has journeyed nearly 3,000 miles from El Salvador to Tijuana, Mexico, and this muffled, predatory inspection will determine her fate.
            “Somewhere Over the Border,” written by Brian Quijada, is based on the true story of his own mother, also named Reina, who left her son (him) behind in El Salvador to seek a better life for them both in the imagined freedom, beauty and prosperity of the USA. In a whimsical conceit Quijada chose to tell this story as an adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” complete with a young girl seeking home and three characters with more than passing resemblance to Baum’s Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion accompanying her on her trek to salvation.
            References to “Oz” are more than just Easter eggs here. Banana farmer Cruz (Luis Sherlinee) wants to attend university and enhance his unchallenged brain in so doing; woeful Silvano (Edward Padilla) has a broken heart after being separated from his family, now living in the U.S.: habit-wearing nun Leona (Luzm Ortiz) would rather be a rock ‘n’ roll star … if she only had the nerve; El Gran Coyote de Tijuana (Fernando Vega, who also plays the narrator/playwright Quijada part) has a booming voice and ostensibly the power to make all the dreamers’ dreams reality; Reina (Vanessa Orozco) has no Toto with her but she’s every bit as doggedly determined as Dorothy Gale. Her desired destination is not the Emerald City but rather the U.S. and a coveted green card.
            Director Carlos Mendoza told me in an interview for the San Diego Union-Tribune that “Somewhere Over the Border” is not so much a story about immigration as it is a story about family and finding home. This makes it more compatible with the themes of the “Oz” book but for me the immigrant’s plight and the risks he, she or they take constitutes the urgency of this show, the musical score for which is underwhelming –same-sounding ballads, overly expository lyrics, and nothing really beyond the title song that is especially memorable.
            The actors are likable. Only Orozco is an impressive vocalist, so thankfully she does the heavy lifting. Crissy Guerrero, portraying Reina’s mother Julia with whom her child has been left, gets two ballads when truly one would have sufficed.
            “Somewhere Over the Border” is also a case of two very different acts. The slow-moving first, which is set in Reina’s El Salvador village, takes far too long to establish that she will sacrifice caring for her young baby in order to seek that better life in America. If you want to get “Wizard of Oz”-ish about it, it didn’t take nearly so long for Dorothy to be swept away from Kansas and down into that magical land over the rainbow. Furthermore, when Reina gets the funds necessary to make the multi-bus-ride trip north and to pay off El Gran Coyote who will facilitate her cross-over, this happens too fast, almost unbelievably so.
            As in “Oz” Reina meets her eventual traveling companions and hears their plights one by one, culminating with their arrival in TJ at the end of the first act.
            The much better, less uneven second act is half the length and more than that it’s gripping and comes with reality checks for Reina. The commentary that playwright Quijada is forwarding about those like his mother who gave up so much for a dream is saturated throughout.
            Very much to its credit, the show does not tie everything up into a big red ribbon at the end nor does it gloss over the terrible trials that would-be immigrants confront.
            A valuable asset to the production is the extensive projection design by Blake McCarty that grounds us not only in locations but in emotional atmosphere. Without these vivid images of Central America, Mexico, Los Angeles and Chicago, “Somewhere Over the Border” would be substantially diminished in impact.
            A live band led by conductor/keyboardist Lyndon Pugeda provides an olio of musical styles, from cumbria to rock and pop, though at times the volume drowned out the singers on stage, in particular Sherlinee in Act One portraying Reina’s brother Adan.
            “Somewhere Over the Border” premiered four years ago at Syracuse Stage, so at this point it is what it is. I can daydream about a tighter, faster moving show, but why?
            What’s important here is the light cast on the immigrant experience. In the current political climate where the top-down message in the USA is “stay the hell out of here” the stories of the real Reina and the Reina of “Somewhere Over the Border” couldn’t be more poignant.
            “Somewhere Over the Border” runs through March 15 at Cygnet’s Joseph Clayes III Theater in Liberty Station.