José Cruz González describes the gestation of his play September Shoes through a series of images that appeared to him: “a barefoot woman changing a motel bed and talking about shoes”, “a giant red chair resting in the middle of a hot Sonorean desert”, and “a middle aged couple dressed in black standing in front of a grave”.

When you step into the Next Stage at the Geva Theatre, the three seminal images instantly converge. Troy Hourie’s evocative stage design and Kirk Bookman’s lighting capture your attention. A theatrical collage that explores the dream images of the playwright, and effectively opens the play with an imaginative handle.    

Ana (Alicia Velez), sitting in the middle of a graveyard, surrounded by a pile of discarded shoes, gazes at a Starlite motel sign. Small white crosses peak out of a bed of flowers below her. . Crosses and flowers also are planted alongside the blue road sweeping down into the graveyard. The eye catcher, though, is the giant red chair embedded in the earth.  It rests on its side like a grave marker. Its huge seat scribbled with the names of the dead, the ghosts of the past, and those who are destined to die.

When the lights came up again, Ana is gone. Instead, a couple, Gail (Maria Elena Ramirez) and her husband, Alberto (Jaime Tirelli), stand stiffly in the graveyard mourning. Gail draped in black with her head bowed. Alberto holding a large black umbrella like a figure out of Magritte. After a moment of silence, Alberto says, “Lets leave”.

Next the couple are found in a motel room squabbling.  They have returned to the scene of their childhood and romance, the town of Delores – Spanish for sorrow. Gail has come to claim the restaurant property left to her by her Aunt Lily Chu, a Chinese woman, a cook. Gail is in the grip of seismic change and feels compelled to rediscover her roots. Eventually she  will take on the legacy inherited from her aunt and seal her fate. Her jittery husband Alberto can’t understand why Gail wishes to stay in this “small town with small people”. He   swore he’d never come back to Delores. Here his sister, Ana, was killed, run over by a hit and run driver. If you have lived or traveled in the southwest or Mexico, you know that the crosses and flowers on the roads signify yet another automobile accident – usually caused by drunk driving. Who killed Ana and buried the truth leads to the climax of the play.

Enter Cuki (Socoro Santiago), the barefoot woman of the playwright’s dream, and a cauterizing figure of the play. Cuki sweeps into the motel room to clean up, and steals a single shoe from Gail.  Nailing the shoe fiercely to the seat in the grave yard, she will compulsively crucifix shoes one by one, like a pixillated angel of death, until her rage is spent. We have a Virginia Wolfe opening in a Lorca setting wrapped in a mystery by Gabriel Marquez.

September Shoes is directed by Michael John Garcés. It is essentially a work in progress, with all that implies. Some performers are double cast: Socoro Santiago (Cuki, Aunt Lily), Alicia Velez (Anna, Little Gail) and David Anzuelo (Huilo, Juan). Different actors playing the characters at different times in their lives. Double casting and the multiplicity of roles echo each other and enable the cast to play all sides of the story line and discover character relationships in fresh ways.   

Unfortunately shifts in time and place often muddied the relationships.  Reality tended to evaporate and characters were left explaining themselves in an atmosphere of rhetorical bombast. Ms Santiago’s bruising monologue on shoes for example, however dramatic, felt like an acting turn, rather than a moment of revelation. What the play lacked was a shared sense of time and place; necessary in an effort as highly creative as this one. It was in the second act that the play came home. A little in tatters but there nonetheless.

David Anguelo’s indigenous performance as the grave digger, Huilo, half out of his mind, stumbling in a stupor of guilt, reflected painfully in his sing song dialect, revealed the play’s potential. While the clash of cultures and the confusion of mixed heritage defines the play’s essence, it was Anguelo’s performance of Huilo, combined with Cuci’s charged obsession with shoes, that brought the mystery of the play to life.

Tierelli’s Albert confronting Anguelo’s Huilo over the circumstances of Ana’s death was anchored. The scene revealed the play’s humanizing potential. The characters mirroring each other, Albert seeking revenge, Huilo’s guilt overwhelming him, both trapped in mutually shared anger, pain, sorrow and loss. The two play it out until the recognition of their shared pain and sorrow lead them to the potential of forgiveness and reconciliation.

Alicia Valez’s performance as Ana/Little Gail was also direct, honest and believable. Although Ms Valez had the least amount of credits behind her name, she was right there. Especially at the end of the play, when a burst of Ana’s colorful swirling dance on the blue road, blossomed like a flower, just before the moment of her death. At this climatic moment, a central image in the play’s design, a fast fade out killed the effect before it was fully realized. But maybe that’s the way “accidents” happen: unexpectantly and with lasting effect.

September Shoes is a magical brew of conflicting realities. Potentially a spirited and emotionally charged dynamic, based on a solid achievement of character.  Hopefully it will come around to that and link to its authenticity at the roots.  

 ©2003 Ned Bobkoff

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Ned Bobkoff has worked with performers
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