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Olivia, a fifteen-year-old girl living unhappily with her father,
Aaron, and stepmother (who’s never seen on stage and appears to be
either vicious or neurotic to the point of pathology), finds herself
throwing up uncontrollably for reasons we’ll learn only later in the
play. In a fever pitch of loneliness and misery, she calls Beatriz, the
estranged mother who lost custody of her when she was six. Beatriz,
volatile, bossy, sensual, smart and insecure, swoops by to pick up her
daughter, and a fraught road trip ensues.
26 Miles is part of the National New Play Network, a
program that assures new plays are produced by at least three member
companies during their first year, and playwright Quiara Alegría
Hudes, a previous Pulitzer finalist, has high and worthy ambitions for
it. Her script is about identity, love, our essential aloneness in the
universe, explorations and dreams, multiculturalism and the way we’re
all, in some sense, like separate mountains undergoing vast but subtle
tectonic shifts. Olivia has always wanted to travel from the narrow
confines of her Jewish father’s home; Beatriz has fiercely yearned for
her lost daughter.
There’s a lot of symbolic freight here, riding on a rather
undeveloped plot, and this freight is carried primarily by the
playwright’s verbal metaphoric flights. Olivia speaks of a photograph
she once saw of a running buffalo framed by snow, and later describes a
Japanese mountain climber, now “frozen in time.” The play begins with a
disquisition on wallets and pickpockets — What if you went
through life stealing wallet after wallet? What if you’re the kind of
person who holds on to the same wallet for a lifetime? — that
hints at profundity and significance but doesn’t deliver. At one point,
the metaphor is made flesh. A man appears out of the mist selling
tamales and describes the way his wife makes them in wonderfully earthy
and affectionate terms. I loved this moment, which clearly represents
nurturance and commitment, and I loved the way Beatriz — betrayed
by the two most important men in her life — reacted to it:
“That’s the only true recipe I ever heard.” But later I wondered, who
was this man? What was he doing wandering through the mist with his
wares?
The rest of the plot doesn’t bear a whole lot of thinking about,
either. We learn from Beatriz that her partner, Manuel, cheated on her,
but never how or why. The actions of Olivia’s father — who
once fought Beatriz bitterly for custody — make no sense at all,
even if he’s supposed to be under the thumb of his new wife. The man is
incomprehensibly passive. He provides no support for Olivia while she’s
home, and raises no objections when she’s carried off by her mother,
who has no visitation rights. He refuses to answer the dozens of phone
messages the girl leaves while on the road. It’s impossible to imagine
a parent of any stripe this unconcerned about an absent minor
child.
Plot matters, because Hudes isn’t the kind of playwright whose
meaning emerges from the sort of magical leaps we find in Sam Shepard,
Sarah Ruhl and Hudes’s own mentor, Paula Vogel: toaster-filled
kitchens, ubiquitous stuffed rabbits, standup routines in Portuguese.
There’s nothing of the absurd here, and the focus is on language rather
than coruscating physical images. Though Hudes’s language is often very
beautiful, 26 Miles would be stronger if she focused more on the
relationship between Olivia and Beatriz — both fascinating
characters — and less on her own lyricism. She does this during
the first half, when the two women are discovering each other: Beatriz
teaching Olivia some words of Spanish; Olivia proclaiming that she
prefers Chopin to Santana. And there’s a nice flashback that brings
together many elements and reveals a lot about this family’s dynamics,
showing the young Beatriz and Aaron experiencing the ecstatic stoned
wallow of Woodstock. At these points, an essential wisdom and
tenderness shine through the text. But eventually, the play becomes
static.
The tech — Michael R. Duran’s set, Brian Freeland’s sound
design, Dick Devin’s lighting — is perfect. In addition to
knockout performances by a charmingly offbeat Ana Nogueira as Olivia,
and Gabriella Cavallero — finally given a role in which she can
stretch her wings — as Beatriz, Jose Antonio Mercado provides a
warm Manuel, and Kevin Hart makes the infuriating Aaron real and
conflicted. This is a beautifully honest production, and though Hudes’s
script still needs work, the play’s already well worth
experiencing.
26 Miles
