This review by longtime Charlotte art critic Lawrence Toppman was published by The Charlotte Ledger on August 10, 2024. Learn more about The Charlotte Ledger’s commitment to intelligent local news and information and sign up for our free newsletter HereAnd look this link for Toppman’s review archive at the Ledger.
Jennifer Wynn O’Kelly’s set is full of lush undergrowth and evokes a jungle house – a place on the verge of being invaded by dark forces of nature. (Photo courtesy of Three Bone Theatre)
by Lawrence Toppman
If you buy a ticket for “Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles” Your confirmation email from Three Bone Theatre contains a paragraph about emotional triggers that can distress theatregoers. Do not read it.
First, it gives away a crucial plot point that I won’t give away here. And second, if you can’t handle the kind of psychological terror that audiences were first confronted with 2,500 years ago, you’re watching the wrong play.
Luis Alfaro has updated Euripides’ drama as the third part of a trilogy inspired by Greek tragedies, following “Electricidad” (from Sophocles’ “Electra”) and “Oedipus El Rey” (from Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex”). Three Bone is using its first grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to produce all three plays: It will be the first American company to do so when it performs “Electricidad” in the 2024-25 season and “Oedipus El Rey” the following season.
Alfaro set “Mojada” among the Latino community in Los Angeles, although an off-Broadway production moved it to the borough of Queens in 2019. The title means “wet” in Spanish, but Latinos also use it to describe undocumented immigrants in the United States.
This is true for Medea, Hason, their son Acan and the wise old Tita, who sneak across the border from Mexico in one of the many harrowing scenes. Tita (Banu Valladares), a sort of Greek chorus for the show and factotum of the family, happily accepts the peaceful anonymity in the historically Chicano neighborhood of Boyle Heights. Medea (Sonia Rosales McLeod), a talented seamstress, hides in her garden and flinches at the noise of the helicopters flying overhead. Acan (Leo Torres) would be happy with a new pair of sneakers and his first cell phone.
But Hason (Christian Serna) has bigger plans. He flirts with Armida (Mariana Corrales), his boss and the neighborhood’s financial queen, who thinks she has a right to his attention even outside of business hours. This plunges all five characters into a tragedy that unfolds with unstoppable horror.
Alfaro and directors CarlosAlexis Cruz and Michelle Medina Villalon keep the most disturbing events offstage, as Greek playwrights did. Even then, the lush thickets surrounding Jennifer Wynn O’Kelly’s set recall a house in the jungle, a place about to be invaded by dark forces of nature.
Alfaro has stayed true to the Greek story of Medea and Jason, with minor changes (one son instead of two, no role for the queen’s father). The Greek couple were also immigrants seeking a better life in a foreign land, trading honor for financial security and power (in Jason’s case). The same plot, a murder, prevents both the couple in “Medea” and the couple in “Mojada” from returning to their roots. And the element of magical realism in Euripides, an intervention by the god Helios, has a parallel in “Mojada.”
Of course, the Mexican family can be sent back at any time if someone calls the migration to have her deported. This adds a level of desperation that Euripides did not provide. His Medea was avenging a debt of honour; Alfaro’s Medea is acting more out of anger and anguish, though both playwrights justify their behaviour. McLeod rises to Medea’s two riveting monologues with tremendous power, operating on a flood of emotion.
Three Bone has always welcomed newcomers, and four of the six cast members make their debut in the show. (Isabel Gonzalez plays the other character, a gossipy baker who realizes that self-interest inevitably trumps friendship.) They make the 95 intermission-free minutes fly by as Alfaro steers the story toward a grim conclusion with an element of hope.
The last sound after the howling has died down is the distant chug of a helicopter, a symbol of the authorities’ relentless pursuit of people without citizenship. A tragedy, Alfaro reminds us, does not have to end in bloodshed; sometimes it ends with the shattered dream of a better life.
When you leave: The Three Bone Theatre “Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles” runs through August 24 at the Arts Factory at West End Studios, 1545 W. Trade St. Performances begin at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday.
Lawrence Toppman worked as an arts journalist for the Charlotte Observer for 40 years before retiring in 2020. Now he is back in the critic’s chair at the Charlotte Ledger, where his reviews appear about twice a month.
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