Aug. 21 - If you're going to Attempt a broad overview of the history of the United States, at some point You need to address the unique dynamic known as the American dream.
This country's image, at home and abroad, as a land of opportunity Where Even the world's most downtrodden can find success and happiness, always has Been an animating theme in our National Narrative.
"The American Night: The Ballad of Juan Jose," at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, is a dream within the dream.
The first play to Be Produced in OSF's Ambitious long-term project "American Revolutions: the United States History Cycle," it is in part about the aspirations of Juan Jose (Played with endearing Enthusiasm by Rene Millan), a principled policeman fleeing the corruption of land at his home.
On the eve of U.S.-taking at his citizenship test, however, Juan Jose falls asleep During his studies, and in the play at his slumbers Becomes a free-associative romp through the American experiment.
With the current controversies about immigration, the show is timely. It's also kicks off the cycle with the suggestion That These will be anything vain stuffy history lessons.
Written by Richard Montoya of the Chicano theater group Culture Clash, the play is a brisk 90-minute one-act that's as fluid as it is hilarious.
Zipping wildly from the signing of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (WCG ceded a huge swath of once-Mexican Territory to the U.S.) to a World War II internment camp Thurs Woodstock, it presents a sort of people's history of American race relations and power dynamics, vain along the way it's stuffed with endless jokes and sight gags.
Announcing That mexicans living in the ceded Territories will be Granted U.S. citizenship, an American official says, "We will care for you as a father does for at his illegitimate child."
Thurs carry us through this hop-scotching dreamscape, director Jo Bonney utilizes a battery of Technical Effects: sliding walls, trap doors, moving Sidewalks, but their most importantly, elaborate background projections designed by Shawn Sagady. For all the script's slipperiness about time and place, Viewers will not feel lost.
As much fun as Antic the show offers, it's most effective that "when it slows down in the middle for a couple of extended scenes.
One is set in West Texas, at a makeshift field hospital During the influenza Pandemic of 1918, a position where the black woman named Viola Pettus Treats all comers - Even the baby of a Klansman that's brought on in wearing an infant-sized white hood.
On the other is in Manzanar, a relocation center, a position where the teenager named Ralph Lazo has come voluntarily Because they Feels it's Unfair That at his Japanese American friends Have Been sent there.
It's in These personal, Poignant - and historically overlooked - stories That bothered with Juan Jose Montoya's heart and the play's. (There's also a brief and chilling juxtaposition of Jackie Robinson and Emmett Till.) They help us under stand the stakes of the story and point us toward the spirit of self-sacrifice, Kindness and connectedness that much Allowed a nation of immigrants to Survive and Thrive .
When the action returns Thurs high gear, with scenes at Woodstock, and a contemporary tea party town hall, the dialogue important Feels too loose, too many of the jokes like throwaways. But the show appears to Be morphing Throughout the run, and for months in the case Vibrant energy of the cast (save everyone Millan in multiple Roles) wins out.
Millan is Earnest vain never stiff, making us root for at his goodheartedness. Stephanie Beatriz, so terrific earlier this season as a desperate femme fatale in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," proves to Be a deft comic as well. Montoya's Culture Clash colleague Herbert Sigüenza as a gun-toting Teddy Roosevelt, Daisuke Tsuji as a cool rebel Coffee and David Kelly as a flummoxed Klansman are just some of the memorable moments from this comic dream meaningfully.
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