NORTH COUNTY NEWS

ANA MARIE WELSH

Last here for their Hellzapoppin’ “Zorro in Hell” at La Jolla Playhouse, Culture Clash —- or at least two members of that satiric Latino comedy trio —- just returned with “Water & Power” in an exciting, chilling, often hilarious production solidly directed at the San Diego Repertory Theatre by Rep artistic director Sam Woodhouse.

”Water & Power” marked a new level of artistic seriousness and a different kind of achievement for the Clash, which premiered the piece two years ago at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. Written by Clasher Richard Montoya and featuring all three members of the quicksilver comedy troupe, this was and is a real play. It has a throughline involving the fictional Garcia twins, and chronicles, with flashbacks and in glittering shades of noir, both their personal odysseys and layer upon layer of corruption among the multicultural power players of Los Angeles.

But “Water & Power” delivers its potent, if sprawling, critique of the City of Angels without losing the qualities that have defined Culture Clash since it began performing on Cinco de Mayo in 1984 San Francisco. Montoya’s sensibility is sharply satiric, pointedly political; both the writing and the performance quality are unbuttoned and ebullient.

Clashman Herbert Siguenza is the sole member of the original cast to appear at the Rep; he reprises his potent performance as the complicated cop Gabriel Garcia (aka Power). Both crooked and idealistic, Siguenza’s Power is on a coke-snorting high in the sleazy Paradise Motel as the show opens. He’s hiding out after committing a crime that has already backfired.

Thanks to a mysterious ex-gangbanger named Norte/Sur, who literally circles the action in his wheelchair, Power is visited by his brother Gilbert, nicknamed Water. Their Mexican immigrant father, you see, worked as a ditchdigger for the fabled Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. He raised his boys to be tough and to rise in the gringo-Jewish world that had shut him out.

A former D.A., Gilbert is now a powerful state senator about to form a political coalition that will close a deal for a 22-acre green space in the Garcias’ old East L.A. neighborhood. Gabriel’s crime gets in the way of all that. So Gilbert heads for the Fixer, a rich, powerful, creepily suave developer even better connected to the powerful gangs —- in prisons and penthouses —- who run the city.

Montoya’s intricate plot borrows liberally from TV crime drama, noir films like “Chinatown,” and mystery fiction. Add magical elements from the all-knowing Norte/Sur, flashbacks to the boys’ childhood, vaudeville-style joking and a little Deer dancer (a Yaqui Indian spirit) to the mix and the play could careen out of control.

Woodhouse and his strong cast hold the elements together in an in-the-round staging that only occasionally flags during its action-packed 100 minutes. Bobby Plasencia excels as Norte/Sur, a chameleon figure who may be a prophet; his epilogue about his own Sweat Lodge conversion proves a tour de force. On opening night, Plasencia even ad-libbed hilariously to a woman heading early for the exit —- or the ladies room.

As state senator Gilbert, Richard Trujillo was short on political charisma, but convincingly concerned about his brother, whose actions he’s quick to judge and slow to understand. The brothers’ fight scenes are realistically choreographed by James Newcomb, and all in all, the three main actors, including Plasencia, play off one another like blood brothers.

Rep favorite Mike Genovese, dapper in head-to-toe white as The Fixer, owned his pivotal scene in an upscale restaurant. Though he didn’t steal the show as Dakin Matthews did in L.A. with his slithering, more roguish and flamboyant interpretation of The Fixer in L.A., Genovese made a firmly frightening, sexually ambiguous thug. And Trujillo made Gilbert’s degradation in the man’s presence palpable.

Young Marc Alexander Gonzalez distinguished the child versions of Water and Power learning to box and outfox one another, and John R. Padilla was empathetic as the boys’ father Asuncion, whose concern for their differences comes to fatally define them.

In the sketch comedy of their city-inspired collages —- “Radio Mambo” (1995) about Miami, or “Bordertown” (1998) about San Diego —- Culture Clash juxtaposed low comedy and tragedy, high camp and pathos, creating scores of characters, male and female, peopling those cities.

In this differently styled exploration of place, “Water & Power” possesses some of the familiar untamed wildness and a good deal of the old Clash comedy. But Montoya’s writing here has psychological weight, too. He manages to compress the events of one violent night and its aftermath into an episodic play riddled with a specifically Latin fatalism. It’s been optioned as a film, and well-directed, it should be a good one.

”Water & Power”

When: 7 p.m. Sundays and Wednesdays; 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays; through Nov. 16

Where: San Diego Repertory Theatre at the Lyceum, 79 Horton Plaza, San Diego

Tickets: $25-$53

Phone: (619) 544-1000

Web: www.sdrep.org

CENTER STAGE

PAT LAUER REVIEW

“Water and Power” was written by San Diego native Richard Montoya, co-founder of the acclaimed Chicano troupe, Culture Clash. The play stars Herbert Siguenza, Montoya’s long-time, multi-talented partner in comical and political crime. It’s all about blood being thicker than water – or power. And, taken from their blue-collar father’s low-end job in the Dept. of Water and Power, those are the nicknames of his East L.A. twin sons, whom the good-hearted guy groomed to make a difference in society. They took decidedly divergent paths; one’s a cop and one’s a senator – and over the course of a tough-talking evening, each will staunchly defend and disavow his most cherished values and desires. 
 
It’s a dark, taut 100-minute thriller, with acid-laced laughs and superb performances, expertly directed by Sam Woodhouse, artistic director of the San Diego Repertory Theatre. A few plot threads and resolutions strain comprehension or credulity at the end, but there’s still plenty to chew on. Some folks at the opening said they needed to see it twice, to glean all the levels of meaning in the quick-witted, fast-paced play. 
 
Montoya’s language is terrific – gritty, real, down-and-dirty and often downright poetic. The staging, which includes a rainstorm that sprays front-row onlookers, is configured in the round, or really in the square, recreating a boxing ring that symbolizes the simultaneous competition and protection the father imbued in his boys. And they do fight to the death for each other. There are as many touching as suspenseful moments. Don’t leave your attention or intellect at home for this one. But don’t stay at home and miss it, either. 
 

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