By Carol Davis
SAN DIEGO — If anyone tells you that family matters don’t matter, they’re wrong, just wrong! Go back as far as the Ancient Greeks and as recently as Quiara Algeria Hudes’ 26 Miles and you will find all kinds of family matters and family dynamics that matter. For better or for worse these family situations help drive (no pun intended) home Hudes’ new work.
Mo’olelo Performing Arts Company is now mounting the playwright’s West Coast premiere of 26 Miles. Its centers its attention on 15-year-old Olivia (Hannah Rose Kornfeld) who lives with her father Aaron (Jacob Bruce), a Jewish Hippie. During his Woodstock days he met her biological mother, Cuban born Beatriz (Cassie Benavidez). Both parents now have new spouses. Olivia is a gifted writer who journals her feelings in a notebook. She also heads her school’s newspaper, The Issue.
Now a teenager with a stepmother from hell, Olivia feels caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. Everything is closing in around her and she feels no peace at home or at school. Her father’s new wife has miscarried for the umpteenth time and does not care to speak with Olivia and an embarrassing moment in school leads her to an overdose of pills.
Since her father ‘won’ her in a nasty court battle eight years ago, he has been her custodial parent. She has not spoken with her mother in months although she lives just across town. For all that it matters, it could be on another planet because of the psychological cultural and ethnic divide between them.
On the night we catch up with her, Beatriz and her live-in mate, Manuel (Raul Cardona) get a frantic phone call from Olivia who is taking a breather from vomiting into a bag because she just swallowed sixteen ibuprofen. She needs to hear her mother’s voice and also to let her mother know that ‘she’s not OK right now’. It’s been six months since the over excitable Beatriz last heard her voice. Crazy to save her daughter from her errant father’s lack of attention, Beatriz races across town and in a sense, kidnaps Olivia in an attempt to save her.
With a change of clothes in her backpack, her notebook, a National Geographic magazine and a map of Wyoming and Yellowstone National Park in tow, the two set off on a road trip that was supposed to be just across town but Beatriz wants to get to know her daughter better and knows that this is a chance of a lifetime to do it… “I thought maybe we could take a trip. Drive. Talk. Get to know each other”.
And thus begins the road trip of discovery (off to see the buffalo, bald eagle, snow covered mountains, but mostly the buffalo running through the snow) where mother and daughter explore, learn, teach and begin to understand and recognize one another for who they are and not what they outwardly seem to be.
Hudes, a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Elliot: A Soldiers Fugue and the book In The Heights manages to steer away from many of the stereotypical road movies by giving 26 Miles a funny yet dream-like quality while never getting overly dramatic. That she brings the real conflict in this multiracial and ethnically charged play to the fore is never in doubt. It’s done with lots of humor and surreal experiences. What the two learn about one another and how they react to each other becomes the start of a dialogue and a cultural understanding that is long overdue.
Mo’olelo Performing Arts had its beginnings in 2004. Its goal is to bring an awareness of socially conscious plays to its audience. In 26 Miles artistic director Seema Sueko has certainly managed to complete this task especially with so much going on in Olivia’s life. She is in essence a half-Jewish, half-Cuban teenager who I’m guessing doesn’t know much of anything about either but who longs to belong in and to a family.
She always considered herself ‘white’. This is especially important since later on in the play she is confronted with the proposition of living with her mother, in her mother’s house and in a turn about, visiting with her father on occasion. Thus ads another layer to Olivia’s uncertain young life, one of abandonment by the very man who raised her.
Is it always easy sailing? Not so much. Does it always work? Not all the time. Is there a lot to digest? You bet. There is some very convincing acting by my young friend Hannah Rose Kornfeld, who is so talented in musical theatre, and who is very much up to the task. She especially shows her maturity when she goes eye to eye with the seasoned Cassie Benavidez (who gets most of the laughs even thou she is a bit over the top in the beginning). It pretty much levels the playing field between the two.
For the most part Benavidez is right on target as she nervously and without caution begins to explore what makes this teenager tick. Wanting so much to please, she also knows it’s her duty to care for her daughter without seeming too overly protective especially in conversations about sex and her days with her father. Jacob, her father, appears to know much less about the daughter that he raised for ten or so years than Beatriz surmised in a few days on he road.
Neither Bruce nor Cardona do much to move the plot forward, but rather are reference points for the mother-daughter relationship. Bruce’s Aaron is such a nebbish and disturbing that one has to wonder how this beautiful child was able to become as interesting. articulate, and smart as she turned out to be. And when he refuses to take her many phone calls while she and her mother weave through their many differences, all respect is lost. Cardona, who plays several characters, is appealing and likeable throughout.
David F. Weiner’s set design includes two sets of stairs leading to nowhere, a desk, chair and bed and a table. Road signs and highway markings convey most of the far-off places visited on the trip. Marilia Maschion’s video projections and Chris Rynne’s accurate lighting design help the audience travel with Olivia and Beatriz from Philly to Ohio, to Wyoming and Yellowstone. The projections can almost be considered as another character in this on-the-go play.
26 Miles has as much to say about family matters as it does about the way we treat ‘the other’ in our society. A trip to Yellowstone or for that matter the Grand Canyon or any other of our National Monuments is as good for the soul as it is for clearing up misunderstandings of family conflicts. It’s refreshing and gives a sense of something bigger than us.
See you at the theatre.
Dates: Through October 23rd
Organization: Mo’Olelo
Phone: 619-342-7395
Production Type: Comedy
Where: Tenth Avenue theatre, 930 10th Ave. Downtown
Ticket Prices: Start at $22.00
Web: moolelo.net