Miracles And Bleakness Meet Transcendentally In `Rooster'

Theater review

"Roosters" by Milcha Sanchez-Scott. Directed by Laura Esparza. Produced by Group Theatre, Seattle Center. Wednesday-Sunday through Oct. 9. 441-1299. -----------------------------------------------------------------

True to her name, Angela is an angel in training. Age 15 but looking all of 12, she crouches in her family's dusty yard playing with Barbie dolls dressed up as saints and communing with heavenly spirits. She begs God for a sign, imploring, "I'm partial to levitation, but you choose."

Angela is one of the funny, poignant and original presences who light up "Roosters," an ethno-mystical tale by Milcha Sanchez-Scott. The Group Theatre is happily opening its 17th season with the Seattle premiere of this popular Chicano play, in an absorbing production directed by Laura Esparza and evocatively designed by Vince Mountain.

"Roosters," written in 1987, pulls off quite a balancing act. On one hand, it is yet another family-under-siege drama, with a wayward father returning home, a defiant son clinging to his role as substitute patriarch, a long-suffering Mamacita and a pious daughter.

By virtue of place (the poor, rural Southwest), language ("Spanglish," a mix of English and Spanish) and cultural detail, the piece also explores specifics of the Chicano experience.

But the archetypal characters reveal some fascinating quirks. And as strange and wondrous things happen to them, they communicate in a savory argot of hard-scrabble irony, knowing self-satire and ecstatic poetry.

Doormats of machismo

This all comes from a feminist slant, but one refreshingly free of polemic. The haggard mother Juana (Olga Sanchez) and her old harlot of an in-law, Chata (Sol Miranda) are both doormats of machismo.

Juana's husband (Winston Rocha-Castillo) is a glib con man, more loyal to his lethal fighting roosters than to his family. The glaring symbolism of his name (Gallo, Spanish for rooster) extends to Rocha-Castillo's puffed-chest strut as he re-enters a family desperate for his fickle love.

But his grown son Hector (Jose Gonzalez) resists seduction. And as "Roosters" culminates, he rejects the paternal legacy of violence to go his own way.

This adds up to more than Freudian Psychology 101, because the play keeps taking risks and summoning surprises. The mystical pivot is Angela, a tough little urchin whose response to the family sorrows is a fairly practical form of divinity. Actress Leyla Modirzadeh captures Angela's calloused piety perfectly.

In another fantastic touch, the cock fights are ritual dances by befeathered humans. Dancers Eric John and Eric Holden transform into "hard-kicking flyers" with the whirling moves of the Brazilian martial arts form, Capoeira. The spare musical score, a jangle of primitive strings and percussion, is by Ken Harris.

Metaphor and sensuousness

Sanchez-Scott's mingled Balinese, Colombian and Mexican heritage probably informed her knowledge of cock fights, and poetic expression. In the spirit of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Pablo Neruda, the dialogue is infused with metaphor and sensuous listings (of vegetables, saint names, et al.).

It's not always easy to deliver, but the actors handle the text fluently - and they rely on the many sharp shocks of humor to defuse preciousness.

Gonzalez warms to his role, as Hector grows, though he needs to loosen up physically. Though somewhat miscast - they're too youthful and pretty for roles that demand plainness and decay - Miranda and Sanchez connect. So does Alex Balderrama as a family friend.

What transports this production, though, is Mountain's set. It provides a cloudy desert backdrop, washed with color and whiteness by lighting designer Vikki Benner; a scarlet chicken coop; and a battered screen door and sloping wooden ramp for a house, arched by a chockablock assemblage of weathered planks.

It's a semi-abstract environment where miracles and bleakness meet - as they inevitably, transcendentally do in "Roosters."