Theatre in Review: A Bodega Princess Remembers La Fiesta de los Reyes Magos, 1998 (EST)

	Iraisa Ann Reilly. Photo: Juliana Cervantes

If you attend the solo show with the lengthy title (see above) at Ensemble Studio Theatre, many things lie in store for you. You will hear Spanish-language versions of "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "Frosty the Snowman." You might take part in (or be asked to judge) a talent contest. Or you may be drafted into a Macarena competition. (You are hereby warned.) Other bits include a video appearance by the late singer Selina, a couple of nifty magic tricks, and a chapter from the Book of Matthew. It's a very busy ninety minutes.

In addition, Iraisa Ann Reilly's often warm and amusing memoir of growing up Latina in Egg Harbor City, New Jersey (population four thousand, not far from Atlantic City) in the 1990s is filled with sharp observations. At the bodega of the title, owned by her grandfather, where she reigned supreme, she notes, "My brother and I would play hide and seek amongst stacked up bags of rice. In the aisle with the cleaning supplies, my grandfather attached a piece of twine to the ceiling and tied a stick on the end, so we could swing from one side to the other, as if we were trapeze artists at the circus." No wonder, she tells herself, "My hometown is the center of the world."

Clearly, Reilly grew up with an eye for comic detail. All dressed up for a big event at her local Catholic parish, she notes, "I looked like an American Girl doll. One of the ethnic ones." Recalling everybody's favorite Spanish-language TV show, she says, "If you took Johnny Carson, American Idol, The Price is Right, and Sixty Minutes, and put it in a blender in a studio in Miami, you would have something sort of close to Don Francisco's Sabado Gigante." Noting how her family's Yuletide was marked by delayed gratification, she says, "In Cuba, Los Reyes [the Magi] brought the gifts on January 6th; here, Los Reyes were replaced by Santi Clo on December 25th. The Reyes would pick up Santa Claus' slack. Like, if we got a toy on Christmas that required batteries, we had to wait for January 6th for Los Reyes to bring the triple As." This is known as exquisite torture.

Using as her framing device a church event held annually on January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany, which recounts the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus, Reilly overturns a cornucopia of memories, most of them fond and funny, yet laced with a wary appreciation of the sorrows of immigration and the challenges of living in a white-majority culture. She is a genial narrator, armed with a half-smile and a slightly wicked glint in her eye. "How many of you remember the Macarena?" she asks, eyeballing the house. "Okay," she adds. "Some of you do, and the rest of you are liars." And she is a whiz at getting people to join her onstage. "Yes, this is interactive," she says, striking an alarming tone, but at the performance I attended, any number of people were happy to join in. (The church dance competition was a minefield, she notes: "There were two ways to get voted out. One: too much use of the hips. The other: not enough use of the hips. You had to find the right balance, staying true to your ancestors and not being a ho."

At the same time, she appreciates the grittier details of her family's history, including her grandparents' fraught exit from Cuba, where hunger reigned, the hotel business that went bust, the sidelining of her mother's musical career by parents who couldn't imagine a career in the arts for their daughter, and the pain, in grade school, of being herded off into a special-ed trailer because she understood Spanish (learned from endless telenovela watching) more fluently than English.)

This scrapbook of scenes from a singular childhood comes with a sensible, yet effective design package. Rodrigo Escalante's set is a miniature evocation of a cabaret setup in a church basement, its atmosphere aided by Carolina Ortiz Herrera's often-colorful lighting. Milton M. Cordero's highly amusing video design includes excerpts from Sabado Gigante, a promo for NBC's The World's Greatest Magic (Reilly was, for a time, the glamorous assistant in her brother's magic act), and video footage from the 1996 Democratic convention featuring Hilary Clinton -- and wait, is that Al Gore? -- doing the Macarena. (And they wonder why democracy is in peril.) The sound, by Daniela Hart, Bailey Trierweiler, Noel Nichols, and Uptown Works, includes a piano-and-metronome combination, a post-time trumpet, and ambient voices, in addition to various musical selections, many of them suitable for lip-synching.

It's a charming piece, but there's a big asterisk attached, which is the lack of an organizing principle. The use of January 6 as a narrative tentpole doesn't provide any dramatic tension, and it sometimes seems that Reilly is bent on including every youthful incident, no matter its relevance to the overall piece. And while she is an accomplished mimic -- calling up chatty housewives, grumpy old men, and a radio DJ turned priest who delivers his homilies in the same tones used to introduce a groovy new platter -- she is less assured when simply being herself. At times, her delivery is rushed, failing to take full advantage of some of the script's most delectable bits. Her director, Estefania Fadul, would do well to help trim and reorganize the material, in addition to getting Reilly to relax into her emcee role.

Still, the raw material is there, and A Bodega Princess Remembers..., which has been co-produced by EST, Lucille Lortel Theatre, and Latinx Playwrights Circle, might yet develop into a piece with enough legs to find homes in theatres far and wide. (I can imagine it as a popular holiday attraction at theatres equipped with black-box second stages.) Before that happens, however, it may need a little unstuffing. -David Barbour