Review: Passion, culture clash in ‘Desire’
by Chuck Graham on Jun. 01, 2006, under Calendar
Victor Carpinteiro and Carlisle Ellis
“We made love,” she cried.
“We had sex,” he insisted.
The difference in their attitudes is the conflict that drives this culture clash of the heart in “El Deseo/Desire” by Victor Hugo Rascón Banda. Borderlands Theater has mounted a production searing in its intensity, reckless in its own desire to portray the poignant compulsions of loneliness.
This is theater of a deeper sort, projected by two actors willing to push their emotions to the extreme, risking everything to create the heat of passion and the crushing emptiness of loss. At the end of the evening, an attentive theatergoer will be as exhausted as the two people on stage.
Victor Carpinteiro plays Victor, a proud Latino who enjoys the muscular feel of his own body, the effortless energy of his torrid dancing ignited by passions of the moment. He sees it. He wants it. He takes it.
Victor is 36 years old. Susan is older. Old enough to be his mother, she says with a delightful giggle.
Susan is an East Coast educated Anglo with money. Not old money but new money she received in a generous divorce settlement. When the play opens she has relocated to Los Angeles, bought a house and taken a job teaching classes at UCLA. Susan is played by one of Tucson’s most trusted actors, Carlisle Ellis.
The dance of the play, in both a literal and figurative sense, is performed on a completely bare stage in the shape of a large circle. At the back of the circle is a bench-type black box about the size of a coffin. On each side of the stage, small spotlights send out horizontal beams in a lighting design always popular with dancers for the way it shapes the body with shadows.
Eva Tessler, the director, is also a dancer and choreographer. She has composed this 90-minute production as a dance for the mind and spirit. Banda has filled his play with layers of meaning, often expressed in Spanish, always with a poetic sensibility that Tessler blends into a swirling flow of imagery and speech.
Between Victor and Susan is a 15-foot length of loosely woven cloth maybe 3 feet wide, dyed wine-red. Sometimes balled up, sometimes stretched out, sometimes spread over them, or under them, the fabric becomes the link between them. Sometimes it bonds them in ecstasy. Sometimes it chains them in anger.
While it isn’t necessary to understand Spanish to feel the heat of “El Deseo/Desire,” a knowledge of the language will add color to the conflict. It seems like about one-third of the dialogue is in English.
The arc of the play is the progression of attraction between Victor and Susan. When she met him at a club in Tijuana, it was lust at first sight. She was a wealthy American. He wasn’t.
In the beginning, her money made their life easier. Then came the real negotiation of a relationship as they tried to find a balance point for two lives that had nothing in common – except desire.
He valued his pride, which she didn’t understand. She valued politeness and manners, which he didn’t understand.
Before long the green-eyed monster of jealousy jumped in between them with both feet, trampling that wine-colored cloth.
Her solution was to insist they get married. He agreed, acquiring the legal right to half her wealth. But how important are property values north of the border when the illusion of true love keeps waving to them from south of the border? The heart is, indeed, a lonely hunter.
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IF YOU GO
What: “El Deseo/Desire” by Victor Hugo Rascón Banda
When: 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, to June 18
Where: Beowulf Alley Theatre, 11 S. Sixth Ave.
Price: $7-$18.75, with discounts
Info: 882-7406
