Haunting look at scars of family’s sexual abuse
If, as a storyteller, you want three siblings to be able to talk to a couple of ghosts and a creepy rendering of Jesus’ head plopped in a lantern, the art form of theater says, “Cool. What else ya got?”
In AlterTheater’s “Ghosts of Bogotá,” playwright Diana Burbano marshals her medium’s superpowers with a magician’s resourcefulness. She pokes and prods at continuities of time and space, laws of physics and biology, till they bend at her will. She creates a space where it’s natural and necessary for one sister to wear a Wonder Woman costume as she speaks her life’s truth to a crowd and for the other to be able to torture her childhood tormentor with just the touch of
her hand.
In the play, whose world premiere opened Saturday, Feb. 1, under the direction of Alicia Coombes, generations of a family seem to be traversing the full arcs of their lives and afterlives all at once, but somehow in real time, without fastforwarding.
Americanized siblings Lola (Livia Gomes Demarchi), Sandy (Carla Pauli) and Bruno (Eduardo Soria) have just arrived in Bogota to arrange their grandfather’s funeral, and they’re not exactly in mourning. Saúl (Tony Ortega) sexually abused both sisters when they were girls and beat their beloved grandmother, Nena (Leticia Duarte).
“Ghosts of Bogotá” makes the siblings’ relationship, especially that of the two sisters, so rich and truthful and lived in that you might feel as if you’ve been watching them grow up their whole lives.
Lola and Sandy have developed very different coping mechanisms for their childhood trauma. Sandy has closed herself. A doctor, she’s a walking scoff, a set of crossed arms, a pair of rolling eyes. If she’s too scarred for sex and pleasure, then no one else should have any fun, either, and Pauli, who always makes quiet as communicative as volume, suggests the layers of pain that built up that defense system.
Lola, a TV showrunner, is all braggadocio and flamboyance, broadcasting all her thoughts and feelings so that they fill an entire room. Even when she’s complaining about being tired or hungry or sick or uncomfortable, she’s adorable, because she inhabits her feelings with the heaving, fullbodied sighs and spasms most adults have been conditioned to abandon.
In a star turn, Gomes Demarchi makes her lack of selfconsciousness deeply conscious, because it’s always pitched to an audience, even if the audience is just the voices of her grandmother’s ghost or a shrine to Jesus (Noe Flores), who’s a lot nerdier and a lot less judgmental than he usually is elsewhere. Flores makes him a loopy, giddy hangeron, delighted to be along for the ride, not needing anyone to think he’s cool or perfect. He knows more than they do, and he knows he still has a few tricks up his sleeve.
When the two women are under the same roof once again, it’s as if they metamorphose back in time or reveal the true selves that mostly lie dormant. The teenage bickering that was always a coded expression of love and protection instantly recommences, as if it were only paused years ago. It’s a shedding of artifice, a small rebirth, maybe the beginning of healing — no small feat in a family with a resigned attitude toward abuse.
In Saúl’s smelly house, Nena’s trousseau might magically pop open from a locked suitcase, revealing sacred objects inside that wield totemic powers, boding both good and ill. A dead man might cradle the tin of his own ashes, as if it were an injured body part in a cast, equal parts treasure and burden. Some characters onstage can see each other; others can’t. Sometimes the rules of this universe feel, if not hazy, then as if cast and creative team haven’t had enough time to wrestle with what they mean. There can be a tentativeness in performances, as if the cast members are still testing the script’s waters, not diving in.
AlterTheater frequently stages its shows in vacant storefronts in downtown San Rafael, eschewing the upkeep of a venue, so that it might “pay artists, not landlords,” as cofounder Jeanette Harrison frequently says. With “Ghosts of Bogotá,” that mission suits the script perfectly. In an informal venue, it can be hard to tell if someone coming from offstage is an audience member or actor. Large windows make passersby a part of the show and make the show a part of the cityscape. Boundaries are porous, “Ghosts of Bogotá” says, and its ability to make you believe that is as much testament to itself as to your own, however unpracticed, powers of imagination.