It's hard to know what to make of playwright Luis Alfaro's surreal yet rather flimsy comedy, which starts out as a rather shrewd social satire about American desires and appetites but then spins out of control into a series of increasingly pretentious and clumsy conceits and metaphors. The trouble with symbols that are presented as dramatic incident is that they need to be married to a strong plot to work. But this play has no story, and the magical realism elements are ultimately little more than feather-thin notions, poorly articulated and illogically presented.
The story concerns the angst of two sisters living in contemporary Los Angeles, who are assailed by different yet oddly intertwined emotional needs. Plump Minerva (Diane Rodriguez) has an unassuageable appetite for junk food and is becoming morbidly obese on a diet of Twinkies, pork rinds, fried chicken, and donuts. Meanwhile her sister Alice (Rose Portillo) has a thing for authority and enjoys promiscuously picking up and sexing up cops, including her latest conquest, a ruggedly handsome archetypal law enforcement officer (Michael Manuel), who made out with her after giving her a ticket.
As they start to date, Alice and her handsome cop find themselves torn between their enjoyment of the free-and-easy lifestyle of quickie sex and disposable romance, and the gradually emergent feeling that they should settle down and commit to each other. Meanwhile, Minerva becomes fatter and fatter, until she is so large she can barely move from the sofa. But then there's a surprise: Her husband Al (Winston J. Rocha) looks on amazed as Minerva suddenly starts to float--for no reason at all that we can see.
Alfaro's play offers no conflict, no suspense, and no clever payoff. By Act Two, the work has almost entirely fallen apart into repetitious scenes that make the same increasingly tedious points over and over again. The dialogue is strangely workman-like and pedestrian for all its attempts to craft a mood of magical realism.
Director Michael John Garces crafts a fast-paced and pleasantly energetic production that is the best this rather blandly empty play deserves. Yet the performances are disappointingly sedate and unexceptional, partially because the characters are seemingly intended to be stock stereotypes. The most rounded and fleshed figure (no pun intended) is that of Rodriguez's sweet-natured and rather innocent Minerva, whose inability to marry her desires with her self-image creates a personality that's a recognizable mix of self-loathing, sadness, and ultimately acceptance. Otherwise this play is ultimately little more than an empty box.