<b>✭✭✭✭</b>✩
<b>by Carmen Aguirre, directed by Marilo Nuñez
Alameda Theatre Company, Factory Studio Theatre, Toronto
April 2-14, 2013
</b>
“Un plato delicioso bien preparado”
The Alameda Theatre Company has revived Carmen Aguirre’s 1999 play <i>Chile Con Carne</i> this year to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the coup d’état in Chile that ousted the democratically elected Socialist Salvador Allende and replaced him with Augusto Pinochet, who ended democratic rule and held power for the next seventeen years. Of the more than 40,000 Chileans who went into exile in the first years of the repressive regime, almost half went to Canada – including the parents of playwright Carmen Allende and those of director Marilo Nuñez. Manuelita, the main character of <i>Chile Con Carne</i> is also a child of recent immigrants to Canada. Despite the specific circumstances that Aguirre’s play reflects, the play has not dated at all – perhaps because it embodies so well the experience of any child caught between the demands of two cultures.
Manuelita is an eight-year-old who finds Grade 4 a torment. Because she speaks Spanish, the other children assume she’s Mexican and if she tries to tells them where she comes from they make fun of her because the only “Chile” they have heard of is the spicy stew of the title. The year is 1975 and Manuelita has been living in Canada for a year. Her activist parents still harbour the hope that Pinochet will be overthrown and they will be able to return to Chile, but this hope is what prevents them and Manuelita from ever thinking of Canada as home.
Manuelita is torn between two cultures. Her mother insists she speak Spanish and remember her Chilean heritage while at school she feels enormous pressure to conform with the gringos around her. In terms of dancing she is caught between the traditional <i>cueca</i> she dances at meetings of émigrés and the disco dances popular in her new country. Her greatest happiness is when Leslie, one of the “in” girl in her class, befriends her. Manuelita never gets her name right and continues to call her “Lassie” after the dog who starred in movies she liked. Since Manuelita lives among refugees who get cast-off clothing from their employers and used furniture from sidewalks and alleys, she is overwhelmed by the wealth that Leslie has and can’t help but aspire to that rather than the tawdriness of her own family’s life.
Yet, Manuelita has learned one important lesson from her parents – to stand up for your beliefs. This she proves in her fight to save her favourite tree, Cedar, from destruction by developers. In this struggle she even manages to recruit new friends for whom fighting for a cause is a novelty, not a way of life. Though the play is told as a series of anecdotes, Aguirre carefully parallels Manuelita’s fight to save her tree with her parents’ protests to save their country. In both cases the Chileans are surprised to find allies among the Canadian population. Gays and lesbians, Indians, native people, Palestinians and ordinary gringos come to support her parents’ cause, while Manuelita’s classmates support hers. The positive aspect of the play is that newcomers learn they do not have to fight their battles alone. The negative, though realistic aspect is that protests can sometimes can only call attention to a problem rather than actually solving it.
All of these complexities Aguirre shows us through the innocent eyes of her protagonist played with infinite charm and sympathy by Paloma Nuñez. Nuñez also plays at least twelve other characters in Manuelita’s world through simple changes in voice and gesture. Probably the funniest sequence in the play is Manuelita’s performance of her own version of Cinderella to entertain her parents and other hunger strikers. She shows us quite believably how the young girl naively infuses the fairy tale with the political rhetoric she has heard at home.
Flavia Hevia’s set design reinforces the atmosphere of innocence. The fabric backdrop has appliquéd mountains and shining sun and Manuelita’s main props, like the blonde wigs she uses to make herself look like a gringa, are all hidden inside one of the several tree stumps on stage. The backdrop, especially the disc of the sun, serves as a screen for a few well-chosen projections by Cameron Davis to highlight elements of the story. Edgardo Moreno’s music and sound design mixes Chilean traditional music, sound clips of Chilean protests with music that was popular in Canada in 1975. The words to Elton John’s “Island Girl” don’t seem quite so innocent in a story about a girl who despises her own skin colour and wishes it were as white as those of her classmates.
The action of the play seems to stop rather than to come to a conclusion. I fully expected one further speech from Manuelita that would give us her perspective on her protest to save her tree. Otherwise, the play gives us a strong insight into the struggle of new immigrants between maintaining cultural identity and assimilating. Manuelita’s struggle with peer pressure is something anyone can identify with. Her struggle just happens to be imbued with cultural and political implications that make that it even more difficult. Aguirre’s Manuelita, a wonderful creation beautifully acted, is someone you will be glad you met.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a <i>Stage Door</i> exclusive.
Photo: Paloma Nuñez as Manuelita. ©2013 Rodrigo Moreno.
For tickets, visit <a href="http://www.alamedatheatre.com">www.alamedatheatre.com</a>.
<b>2013-04-04</b>
<b>Chile Con Carne</b>