“Alma” – By Benjamin Benne. Directed by Elena Velasco. Presented by Central Square Theater, 450 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, through March 26.
by Michele Markarian
It is 2016, and Trump has won the election. Alma (Karina Beleno Carney) is the mother of Angel (Luz Lopez), a teenager preparing for college. Alma is excited; tomorrow is the day that Angel is going to take the SATS and ace them so that she can fulfill their shared dream of Angel going to UC Davis and becoming a veterinarian. Angel, however, has other plans, which Alma sees as a slap in the face for all of the sacrifice and money she’s put into this dream for her daughter.
Playwright Benne captures perfectly the painful push and pull that goes on between parent and child when that child is on the cusp of adulthood and independence. “Am I a bad mama? Then why are you acting so…rancorous? What did I do wrong?’ Alma implores Angel, who is being disrespectful and difficult. Yet Alma is such a doting mother that when Angel, after betraying their dream, comes out of her room holding a stuffed animal and asks Alma to sing to her, she does. We are all suckers for our children, and Alma, we learn, has sacrificed a lot more than just money – she’s crossed the border illegally from Mexico, pregnant with the daughter she hopes will have a better life. And Angel, despite her horrid attitude, is frightened – she doesn’t want to let her mother out of her sight, for fear the INS will take her away. She’d rather enroll in a community college and stay close by. Between mother and daughter, only Angel knows that the deck is stacked against people like her.
Beleno Carney and Lopez have a wonderful, credible chemistry that rollicks between fierce anger and fiercer love. Beleno Carney wears her affection for Angel openly; she can’t hide her admiration and wonder for her daughter. Lopez does a terrific job as someone whose bravado and bluster hide her very deep attachment. Under Velasco’s taut direction, the action never stops. While sometimes the script is heavy-handed on the symbolism – i.e. Alma has a dream where elephants won’t let her pass – it does drive home the fact that Alma and Angel are in a precarious state of limbo from which there is no satisfactory solution.
Eric D. Diaz’s realistic set adds a layer of verisimilitude to the onstage drama. I stumbled by it on my way to my seat and was startled – even close up it looked like somebody’s apartment and not a stage set. Alma reheats Angel’s frijoles in a microwave that actually works, as does the television that intermittently comes on with Trump’s braying voice, another somewhat heavy-handed reminder of the pervasiveness of the media and the threat of the upcoming administration hanging over their lives. Andrea Sofia Sala’s lighting design beautifully illustrates the vastness of the cosmos. Parts of the dialogue are in Spanish, which in context, is understandable, even if you only have a rudimentary knowledge of the language. But the glue that holds the piece together is the love between mother and daughter, and the tenuous space they inhabit together in America. For tickets and information, go to: https://www.centralsquaretheater.org/
