I Hate Fucking Mexicans
nytheatre.com review by Ed Malin
October 16, 2012
Some plays have a really good rhythm, no matter the content. This is the case with Mexican author Luis Enrique Gutiérrez Ortiz Monasterio (a.k.a. LEGOM)’s work I Hate Fucking Mexicans. Debbie Saivetz, Ana Graham and Danya Taymor have translated it into English and brought it to the Flea Theater for its U.S. premiere, a true cultural exchange from a Mexico City company which specializes in bringing foreign theater to Mexico and Mexican plays to the world.
Without this explanation, you might be surprised by (but possibly still like) this play about a strange Texas family who hate everyone. Tamara-Lee (Layla Khoshnoudi) and her brother Barry Joe (Adriano Shapln) have been abandoned by their mother, who ran off with a Mexican. Due to the family mistrust of communists and evolutionists, the children were to be home-schooled, but Mom left before any literacy could be imparted. When Nigerian immigrants settle in the area, Barry Joe provokes them, four individuals beat him severely, and the family responds by hunting down and hanging seventeen Nigerians, at which point the sensible Aunt Laurie (Michelle Silvani) urges restraint. Ugo Chukwu demurely portrays the whole group, including one “fat Nigerian whore” who is killed so Tamara-Lee can appropriate her wheelchair. The hard-working Mexicans of the vicinity barely receive a better welcome. Granted, Tamara-Lee spends some weeks in her trailer scissoring with a lovely Mexicana (Janice Amaya). But, par for the course, the love turns to hate and Tamara-Lee continues to live semi-incestuously with her brother.
It’s not the exaggerated Texas accents that make these characters endearing. I certainly don’t “like” The Simpsons when I watch them behaving like idiots, but then again that cartoon does not have the beautiful language of this play. The story is told with much repetition and musical accompaniment, so that by the end the family’s protracted, hate-filled decline feels more like desperate sadness. Really, the characters are so indistinct that I wasn’t surprised to learn that the text is one long paragraph in many voices, which has been performed with anywhere from 2 to 9 actors. This helps explains why the author, LEGOM, is emulated by other Mexican authors and has had his work translated into Hebrew, French, and English. The sparkle of this production comes from the directing choices. I lift my sombrero to Danya Taymor and her fellow-translators. While Tamara-Lee is rattling off a litany of people she hates (for religious and racial reasons, among others), the theatricality recalls Pinter. I also liked Starlet Jacobs’s set and Jonathan Cottle’s lighting, which show darkness and despair creeping into a lush paradise.
