In 'Aliens,' unbalanced pacing can't keep an immigrant clown down
Don’t you think there’s always something a little sad about a clown? Maybe it’s just the fact there’s no way of knowing the performer’s real emotional state behind the garish greasepaint.
Saviana Stanescu’s “Aliens With Extraordinary Skills,” onstage at Clermont’s Moonlight Players, takes a look at the person behind one white-faced clown. As it happens, she’s an immigrant in the country illegally.
Nadia comes from the eastern European country of Moldova and only after arriving in the United States realizes her documents are phony. To make matters worse, she has received a deportation letter — but instead decides to go underground among the millions in New York City.
Stanescu’s play tries very hard not to be heavy-handed, perhaps too hard – because without a stronger point of view, it can feel like not much is going on in the first half. The Moonlight Players production, directed by Tom Kline, does much to liven things up with charismatic leading players who draw laughs in this dark comedy, even if some scenes don’t rise to their full potential.
The second act, on the other hand, is filled with action – an attack on a woman (trigger warning), an arrest, a wedding. So the long setup does have eventual payoff.
While you wait for the action, enjoy the fine performances by Grace Foltz as Nadia and James Canavan as Borat, a fellow immigrant who abandons clowning for taxi driving.
Foltz makes Nadia’s sunny — some would say naïve — disposition believable, and her charm has you squarely in Nadia’s corner. Canavan’s Borat is a likable galoot, and Canavan is funny even while showing Borat’s inner pain at his struggles. The secondary characters don’t fare quite as well. Although Foltz and Canavan sport accents, Linette Reyes does not as Lupita, Nadia’s roommate. It’s odd as it makes it unclear whether she’s an immigrant herself. (We later learn she has a green card and comes from the Dominican Republic — but no accent?) Reyes has an appealing manner, though one might say she’s a bit soft-spoken for an exotic dancer in Queens.
Joe Choi plays Bob, a U.S. citizen who mingles with the others — and there’s something delightfully pointed in casting a man of Asian descent as the play’s “real” American. Choi is given some of the play’s bigger speeches, and on opening night he didn’t always find the dramatic delivery to convey their import.
As relentless immigration agents, Brendon Rogers and Charles Truscott round out the cast with a nifty double act that has them finishing each other’s sentences in a crisp staccato.
The show doesn’t preach on either side of the immigration debate, though it’s clear where its loyalties reside. Ultimately, this is a story about people both like us and different from us – a good way to put a human face on a timely issue.