CATCO brings Alvaro Saar Rios’ story of family, friendships, and wrestling, Luchadora!, to life in a marvelous production directed by Chris Leyva.
Luchadora! follows Nana Lupita (Sara Pardo Fishburn, also music director) recounting a pivotal moment of her childhood to her granddaughter Vanessa, Alexis Foulis. We see young Lupita (Neo Gallegos-Samuels) growing up in Texas in the late ‘60s, with her best friend Leo (Vincent Maneri) and his younger sister Liesl (Keegan Hardin).
Lupita navigates a loving but tenuous relationship with her father (Cory Velazco) and Leo and Liesl follow their sister Hannah’s (Kennedy Spitzer) journey into the military through letters home. The plot kicks in when Lupita learns a town mask maker (Elena Foulis) has a long relationship with her parents, her father’s luchador past as Masquerosa, and begins training for a big match with the son of an old rival, El Hijo (Byron Reyna-Corzo).
Rios’ play and Leyva’s direction make excellent use of the specifics of the setting: a woman running away to join the army not only when it was less accepted but also at the height of Vietnam, a man who came to the country for pulverizing migrant work, ugly racial tensions, and the colorful, dynamic excitement of Lucha Libre.
I didn’t bring personal experience in much of the milieu to this, as a white man who didn’t go to Texas until I was in my 20s – never a prerequisite for storytelling, one of the pleasures of theater is a window into lives and hearts that aren’t our own – the parts of it I did, with parents who were in the service a few years after this is set, and as someone who was a luchador freak as a kid, rang very true. Arnold Bueso’s eye-catching set and Mary Yaw McMullen’s spot-on costumes help drive this world home. The production uses those sharp details to heighten the universal story of a girl finding her place in life as a person and how that connects with her family and her community.
The core relationships here are finely drawn, Fishburn brings gravitas and a sense of mischief to the older Lupita, and we see some of those mannerisms inside the delightful, antic energy of Gallegos-Samuels’ take on her younger self, as well as her distracted but determined granddaughter Vanessa in an interesting, subtle take from Foulis. The giddy comic chemistry of Maneri and Hardin with each other and Gallegos-Samuels shifts gears with ease into some intense drama around a few heartbreaking scenes featuring Spitzer as their far-away sister.
Foulis’ witty, electric presence as the mask maker not only enhances the world of wrestling, but deepens and shades Lupita’s relationship with her father who we reasonably see through his daughter’s eyes. And Velazco is astonishing; so often in works of art built around a child’s perspective the parents can come across as one-note or cartoonish, but Velazco sidesteps those pitfalls as easily as the wrestler his character was in his youth dodged a topé. He makes us feel the character’s frustration and worry but also his hope and belief in his daughter and in the possibility of a better world.
And the more cartoonish – by design – aspects are smashing. Authentic-looking wrestling choreography from Donnie Hoover and Shawn “Onyx” Jones, performed by Reyna-Corzo and Tom Murdock, enliven the proceedings with explosions of color and adrenaline, and Reyna-Corzo’s on-the-mic announcements drew huge laughs and applause.
Luchadora! comes bearing impactful lessons about grief and about learning the difference between the secrets you keep and the ones that you must let out before they eat at you. But it never gets heavy; these lessons come with all the color and wonder of the world, a world that includes masked wrestlers and generations-long feuds.
Luchadora! Runs through March 6 at Columbus Performing Arts Center, with performances at 7 p.m. Friday, February 25 and Saturday February 26, 2 p.m. February 27, 7 p.m. Friday, March 4, and 2 p.m. Saturday, March 5 and Sunday, March 6. For tickets and more information, visit catco.org/2021-22/luchadora.
