STAGE WEST: "The Hombres" at the Old Globe

Left to right: Jesse J. Perez, Jason Sanchez, Martina Sola and Jonny Beauchamp in "The Hombres." Photo by Rich Soublet II

            What is a man? What makes a man? Who are the hombres?
            These are questions that ask for reflection – and answers – in Tony Meneses’ “The Hombres,” onstage in the Old Globe’s Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre.
            Worlds collide when a New Jersey construction worker, an unsettled Latino man with machismo coursing through his veins, ventures into the yoga studio next door. Hector (Martin Sola) has been summoned there after female students have reported seeing him staring into the studio. This information is conveyed gently and a bit hesitantly to him by a kind instructor, Julian (Jonny Beauchamp).
            Though Hector is defensive, it happens that there is nothing unseemly or nefarious about his peering into the studio adjacent to his workplace, and in a subsequent, voluntary visit he surprises Julian by asking if he can become a yoga student himself – in exchange, and in lieu of money, he will perform janitorial duties after hours.
            This is the beginning of more than an unusual teacher/student relationship. A friendship forms and along the way respect for and a mutual understanding of each man’s inner and outer life. Hector and Julian couldn’t be more different yet the discipline and serenity, and the sacred chakras, bring them together.
            Meneses has interwoven dichotomies throughout the fabric of “The Hombres,” the physical one being the adjoining construction site and the yoga studio, subtly integrated by the award-winning scenic designer David I. Reynoso. From the overhanging girders next door, Hector’s co-workers Pedro (Jesse J. Perez) and Beto (Jason Sanchez) wonder where he’s been disappearing to each day, and before long they’re observing changes in his behavior and his attitude. They even postulate that he’s perhaps dying.
            Not dying, but living. Living with who he is and trying, as the story evolves, to become the kind of man unlike the one who’s estranged himself from his wife and children, a man not prone to temper or violence.
            Pedro is the more curious of the two outsiders, and in a plot machination that heightens the humor of “The Hombres” considerably he interjects himself into Hector’s and Julian’s classes and becomes a student himself. Perez, boisterous and physically animated and very funny, makes for an unlikely but very likable yoga student.
            When young Beto, who’s prone to spitting down on well-dressed suits walking beneath the girders and ogling women below too, can no longer remain an outsider, “The Hombres” takes a dark turn during a scene of startling confrontation with everyone else and, revealingly, with himself.
            Where “The Hombres” goes from here is best left un-recounted. Suffice to say that those questions I posed at the outset are addressed and if not fully answered, present for deep thought. Meneses’ narrative can be forgiven for becoming preachy at its close, really when preaching wasn’t necessary, but it’s helpful to remember that as much as “The Hombres” is about gender and identity and most of all masculinity (whatever that may be), it’s about the characters who are the hombres -- what differentiates them, what defines them, and what they share.
            Sola’s performance as the searching Hector has understated power, while Beauchamp is the essential figure of the play. His is a quietly potent turn as well, utilizing movement and silent reaction too as means of portraying someone seeking his own perfect peace while aware that there is nothing, or no one, perfect.
            Meneses has added a fifth character, Miles (Robert Lenzi), a new student of Julian’s with GQ looks and flaunting flirtation to spare. That he has a wife and child on the way parallels the sexual tension he fuels between himself and Julian. I can appreciate how this subplot jibes with all that the playwright is posing about men and who they are, though little would be lost were it not in the play.
            “The Hombres” is directed by the reliable James Vasquez who honors Meneses’ story with the intimacy it merits. Sound designer Leon Rothenberg’s acoustic touches convey the contemplative aura of a yoga studio.
            In the theater on opening night, I overheard a guy sitting behind me who’d possibly been reading the program notes before the production began. “I don’t want to reconsider what my masculinity means,” he was saying with emphasis. Maybe he was kidding. But maybe he did reconsider once the performance was over, or at least think about who all the hombres are in this splintered, patriarchal and prejudice-ridden world of ours.
            “The Hombres” runs through June 21 in the Old Globe’s Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre in Balboa Park.