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"What Happened in Boston, Willie"
Reviews of Current Productions
note: entire contents copyright 2012 by Barbara Lewis"The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity"
Reviewed by Barbara Lewis
It’s definitely a crowd pleaser. The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Diety, which
opened the last week of July at the Calderwood Pavilion in the Boston Center for
the Arts under the banner of Company One, which is quickly becoming one of the
most exciting theatrical outfits in town, knows how to emotionally connect with
an audience. The stage is a boxing ring and the wrestlers are barely clad with
their oiled muscles rippling and dancing. The humor is broad and incisive.
Kristoffer Diaz, the Obie-winning playwright, knows the narrative world of
televised wrestling, and he brings its quick jab thrills to the stage. Shawn
LaCount, the director, brings it all together inside the red ropes with racy
verve. And all the actors (Ricardo Engermann (as Mace); Chris Leon (as Chad);
Peter Brown (as Olson); Jake Athyal (as Vigneshwar Paduar) and Mike Webb (as
Billy Heartland) are a delight to hear and watch.
An underdog tells the story. Macedonio Guerra, a last name that means war,
was born Puerto Rican and poor in the South Bronx. As a boy, he fell hard for
wrestling, which he thought of as an art form. So Mace – notice that almost
everything here is reduced to the short byte and the quick read -- grew up to
live his dream, but not on the winning side. He is the jobber, making lesser
talents shine like stars.
Then he sees a chance to push through, which comes in the guise of a facile
ball-playing South Asian from Brooklyn who uses crotch grabbing as verbal spice,
runs after any girl he sees, and gets billed by the thin, driven, suit-wearing,
money-hungry wrestling manager as a brown fundamentalist Paki Muslim terrorist.
So all the boxers, save one, aka Billy Heartland & Old Glory, are
incarnations of black or brown, and Olson, the money man who calls all the
shots, is white, probably of Scandinavian heritage. Such is the way of the
democratic world where winners and losers are the biggest story in town,
stirring to fever pitch good red American blood, all mixed together, each rising
or falling to its right level.
Chad Deity, the star, is black but his days are numbered even while the gold
belt circling his waist as he makes his pectorals dance is big and flashy. His
story is old. Which of the up-and-coming brown guys will replace him, nudge him
out of the way, pin him to the mat, and take over his championship glory? The
whole set-up is metaphoric of the power dynamic in America heavy with suited
money-men, unclad gladiators, and eager crowds in the seats demanding to be
sated with circus and bread.
Oh yes, there are raisins in this mix, plump raisins that were once grapes
picked by Mexicans. Chad, which is also the name of a very poor central African
country where the Sahara is located, is very much a new-age immigrant American
saga of the arena, with anyone and everyone emerging into the public eye to vie
and pummel for favor. By shortening the name of the play to Chad, I am following
the reduction game that is prevalent in the world of pitting arms and backs
against the odds and the floor and seeing who survives to fight another day.
It’s a virtual parade of nations entering the mouths and minds of these
characters who regularly reference Mexicans, Dominicans, Japanese, Chinese,
Russians, Indians, not the native kind, Filipinos, and others. I wonder if Diaz
ever read the Battle Royale scene in Ellison’s novel, The Invisible Man, which
posits that America’s main entertainment is watching two men of dark complexions
fight for the titillation of the fairer than fair onlookers, with the viewing of
this contest staged for their delectation and thus confirming their superiority
and privilege.
The payoff is that at least one, in due time, will be utterly vanquished, and
both are diminished in the process. Are we regurgitating that old saga for a new
generation, with a somewhat more piquant sauce? And doesn’t it all, in the long
run, go back to the Romans who found the pulp of their essence vitiated by a
surfeit of gaming.
Rather than being accused of over thinking the healthy, ever engaging pulse
and throb of the competitive urge, that builds muscle, let me elaborate on my
beginning. This is well-written, well-acted, extremely well-directed fare that
keeps you on the edge of your seat and stirs your mind too. We are looking at
ourselves looking at a reflection of ourselves and what could be more
stimulating and fulfilling than that? Kristoffer Diaz, the playwright, is a
clever one to watch. And the Company One brand thrills once again.
THE THEATER MIRROR, New England's LIVE Theater Guide
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