Theater concludes season with 'Marisol'

Melissa Stein
Chief Copy Editor

In "Marisol" playwright Jose Rivera's future, the world is plagued with pestilence.

Acid rain burns the skin, and apples and coffee are extinct. The sun never rises and the moon is lost in the orbit of another planet. A fire rips across Ohio and people are thrown into jail for maxing out their credit cards. Men can bear children.

The play leads us into the life of Marisol Perez, a young Puerto Rican woman living alone in the Bronx as society's ills fester around her. As she kneels beside her bed, prays the Lord her soul to take and sleeps with a knife under her pillow, her guardian angel hovers above her and protects her from a golf club-wielding maniac in a subway train and an irate woman with the wrong address.

Marisol, played by Natasha Baumgardner, is approached by her guardian angel, played by Erica Sutherlin. The angel tells Marisol that God is senile and dying and the angels are waging war against him. Thus, Marisol, and others as well, will have to fend for themselves as angels take arms and don wings of war.

After being approached by the angel, Marisol's world takes a strange turn and veers off in an even wilder direction when the angel hands Marisol her wings of peace. The humans become destitute and roam the streets as the world and the heavens fall apart. Nazis goose-step through New York City, carrying gasoline cans and setting the homeless on fire.

The play is a thought-provoking, dramatic commentary about the ruin the world is bringing itself to. The play also leaves open the possibility that Marisol is killed in the subway by the maniac, and we are taken on her journey through purgatory.

The script is saturated with religious symbolism. For example, many references are made to salt. In one scene, Marisol is unable to sleep because her neighbors are screaming and car alarms are going off. A woman is pounding on her door, demanding her boyfriend. When it seems as if the woman is going to break in, Marisol's guardian angel turns the woman into a pile of salt, akin to the Biblical story of Lot's wife who turned into a pillar of salt after looking back at Sodom against God's orders. Another reference to salt is made in the scene with Marisol and Lenny, Marisol's friend June's lunatic brother. He has pulled an apple out of a bag, which he claims he found in the courtyard of the Pentagon. He bites into it, and Marisol then takes a bite but spits it out because she says it is filled with salt. Also, when the angels from the sky, the waters become salty.

Crosses also appear in the set; Marisol wears one around her neck, and then throughout the play, Marisol and the angel spread their arms while keeping their bodies straight to resemble crosses.

On the other hand, several references are made to anti-Semitism: June, played by Kari Boyer, becomes a Nazi after having kicked Lenny, played by Scott Miller, out on the street. She pours gasoline on the homeless and sets them afire. This is reminiscent of the persecution of the Jews during the Holocaust. Another reference to the Holocaust is made when Lenny and Marisol are burying his stillborn child in a grave the city provides for the children born on the streets. The graves stretch out like a sidewalk. During the Holocaust, Jewish headstones were toppled by the Nazis and set as sidewalks and streets.

Baumgardner plays Marisol with such conviction, her fear is felt when she is about to be attacked on the subway and again when she is nearly raped by Lenny in her apartment.

And even with a sprained ankle, the show must go on for Baumgardner. Director Bill Grivna said she had sprained it against a platform five days before Friday's performance and had slipped again that day. Yet, she ran across the stage and climbed stairs in knee-high boots. Grivna said she wraps and ices the ankle daily and is under the supervision of Chad Kelsey and Dan Stephens, certified athletic trainers from the athletic department.

Sutherlin is also not the fairy tale version of an angel. She plays the part with aggression and wears a leather coat and jeans, not the stereotypical flowing, white dress and halo.

Shane Signorino gave the play comic relief as the Man With Scar Tissue, a former air traffic controller who had taken to drinking and was out on the street, only to be burned and scarred by the neo-Nazis. Not only did his lines have bite, but so did his physical acting. Especially memorable is his use of a large, foam rubber magnet, which his character claims will bring back the moon.

Miller made a convincing madman obsessed with Marisol. He also played a difficult part as a man giving birth. Although, the scene of Lenny giving birth with Marisol as his midwife elicited some chuckles from the audience, the actors took the scene seriously and carried an empty coat as if a stillborn child were actually swaddled inside.

The set captured the urban grittiness of the Bronx and wrapped around the audience so the viewers were not just observers but participants as well. The street people were the set. Sometimes it felt as if the street people were looking at the audience with longing.

The costume design was fitting. But Sutherlin seemed to be impeded by her wings and her long black coat as she descended the staircase in the first act. The maniacs and the street people looked dirty, gritty and oily.

The music accompanying Marisol's journey was conceived, performed and recorded by Nick Sears and Nathan Ruyle. The music was an upbeat tempo of electronica and other forms of music, setting the scene for the frenetic energy of New York City.

Rivera earned a 1993 Obie award for "Marisol," along with his many others he has won for plays such as "References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot."

"Marisol" continues at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and at 2 p.m. Sunday in the Katherine Dunham Hall theater. Tickets are $5 for students and seniors and $7 for the public. Tickets can be purchased at the fine arts box office at 650-2774. The play is not suitable for children due to strong language.