Jose Rivera's disturbing modern allegory takes place in a boarded-up safe house where a collective of blue-collar vigilantes have retreated to wash away a few gallons of blood spilled during their grisly murder of the town bully: a tyrant named Joe who over the past few years has brutalized, raped, and murdered many of their friends and neighbors in this tight-knit rural community. It is a deed of Shakespearean breadth, leading the tale's conflicted septet of perpetrators to alternately party euphorically and drown their excitement in lustful reverie before they eventually begin to doubt the righteousness of their actions.
Rivera possesses a distinctive ability to take everyday people and somehow elevate them to heroic stature. Here he lifts these seven comrades' contemporary small-town ways and principles to reflect a sensibility purposefully meant to echo old Sophoclean mores, transporting his Coors-drinking, f-bomb-spouting, formerly sexually repressed characters—though it's never explained how Joe managed to control that all-too-human instinct—into brave new philosophical territory where they ponder such weighty and sometimes elegiac questions as "Whose spirit have I stolen to tell my story?"
Rivera's challenging, passionately rhythmical dialogue often proves daunting to these well-meaning fledgling theater company members acting their hearts out in a tiny and badly lit black box in the middle of Hollywood. But somehow, under the taut direction of Richard Martinez—who also does a remarkable job of staging his seven players fluidly in the extremely claustrophobic and restrictive space—Rivera's nightmare still comes to ferocious life. The difficult, often unruly poetry is obviously hard for some of the performers to wrap their lips around, but still their emotions are sincere, the fear and suspicions and elation these people experience genuinely moving. In a larger space, however—one that might allow a grander, more classical execution—Rivera's indictment of those menacing human emotions such as hatred and retribution might succeed more completely, especially when sweeping questions are asked that reflect our fragile species' age-old uncertainties as we slog through our lives on this often brutally flawed Earth.
Presented by Urban Theatre Movement at the Underground Theater, 1314 N. Wilton Pl., L.A. Apr. 8–May 15. Fri.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m. (323) 369-0571. www.urbantheatremovement.com.