Theatre in Review: Torera (WP Theater)

	Jacqueline Guillen. Photo: Joan Marcus

In Torera, the playwright Monet Hurst-Mendoza wants us to root for her heroine, Elena, in her struggle to become a bullfighter, but she never explains why. Instead, the author spends a great deal of time setting up a complicated family grouping: Elena is the daughter of Pastora, a widow who keeps house for Don Rafael, a famed retired toreador. Pastora has also more or less raised Tanok, Don Rafael's son, all but guaranteeing that the boy becomes Elena's best friend. (Tanok's mother remains offstage, although we hear that she cries herself to sleep nightly over Don Rafael's infidelities.) This setup is, in part, the settling of a debt: Pastora's husband died in the bullring assisting Don Rafael. And pretty early on, it becomes clear that Pastora and Don Rafael share a history.

From the moment we first see Elena and Tafok, aged twelve, their relationship has an undertone of competition. She envies that her friend is on track for a career in the ring, thanks to his father's influence. But Elena has a claim as well: "Have you ever just felt that you were born to do something, Tanok?" she asks. "Like you couldn't control it? That's how I feel about the corrida. The spectacle, the dance!"

That's a solid basis for conflict, but the above lines pretty much sum up Elena's passion for the sport. This is a problem on two fronts. First, for an American audience, bullfighting is either a niche endeavor or a revolting display of animal slaughter. (Not all will sympathize with Elena praising Tanok for concluding a fight by taking possession of the bull's tail and ears.) Occasionally, the script describes bullfighting in dubiously elevated terms: Tanok is a rejoneador, who typically fights on horseback, or, as Don Rafael puts it, "closer to God, above everyone else." Well, that's one way to put it.

This raises another, associated problem: I only know what a rejoneador is because I looked it up. Indeed, the script is largely mum about the arcane rules and roles of bullfighting. A great deal of upset is caused because Elena urges Tanok to execute a porta gayola, a daring gesture in which he falls to his knees to greet the bull. There's also talk about rejones, the spears used to kill the bulls. These and other matters are mentioned without explanation. Theatergoers shouldn't have to turn to Google after the show to understand what they have just seen.

For that matter, the play never really engages with the fact that female bullfighters are vanishingly rare. (Conchita Cintron, a notable torera in the 1930s and '40s, is namechecked, but we learn nothing about her.) The opposition to Elena's dream comes from Pastora and Don Rafael, and it is largely personal. ("You'll make a wonderful wife one day," Pastora tells her daughter, getting a scowl in return.) This point is elided when Tanok, who progresses in his career, hires Elena as a kind of associate, then, at the last minute, has her join him in the ring. That this happens at a major event, in front of forty thousand spectators, and Elena has little or no practical experience, beggars belief. (At the very least, it needs a stronger setup.) The sequence that follows exists to stage a reversal of fortune that one can see coming well in advance. It is followed by a bombshell revelation that has been so assiduously foreshadowed that it packs virtually no surprise.

Possibly because the director, Tatiana Pandiani, is also a choreographer, the many scene changes are executed by a pair of dancers, one of whom (Christian Jesus Galvis) also stands in for the bull in the rather sedate corrida scenes. He and Andrea Soto go about their tasks with grace, but as the play leaves so many nagging questions hanging, their presence comes to seem a tad intrusive. Jacqueline Guillen's tough, edgy Elena is sometimes hard to like, given her hard-to-parse devotion to killing bulls, but she partners well with Jared Machado as Tanok. (Neither performer displays the panache and grave dignity that one associates with the sport, although God knows it is hard to replicate onstage.) Elena Hurst's Pastora provides Elena with a powerful, if loving, antagonist. Jorge Cordova is wooden as Don Rafael, although the character is one-note.

Emmie Finckel's set, with its slate floor, tiled walls, concrete latticework, and abundance of flora, is lushly atmospheric, one of the best to be seen at WP in some time. Yuki Nakase Link floods the stage with daylight, switching to delicate blues and purples for fantasy sequences, and using sidelight to burnish the choreographed sequences. Costume designer Rodrigo Munoz seems to have a good sense of what the well-dressed toreador will wear. G Clausen's sound design includes various types of Latin music, cheering crowds, public announcements, and rooster crows.

Apparently, Torera wants us to root for Elena in pursuit of her career. In this case, however, it's not enough to celebrate a woman's achievement; what she is trying to achieve matters, too, and it's an issue that Hurst-Mendoza would rather not discuss. It's a pity; avoiding this issue leaves her with half a play. --David Barbour