“Alma,” a heartfelt two-character drama, which opened this weekend on Chance Theater’s smaller stage, is an intimate look inside how a larger social issue — the stresses of undocumented immigration — tests the fabrics and bonds within a two-person family.
In the play’s Orange County premiere, a hard-working mid-30s mother from Mexico, and her high school daughter, a culturally Americanized U.S. citizen, grapple with challenges affecting their future while wrestling — quite literally in some moments — with each other.
During the work’s 95 minutes they come to grips with everything from the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election to the merits of a dubious luncheon choice of Hot Cheetos and beers vs. sensible rice and beans (in this one, it’s the daughter’s digestive system that comes out badly).
The setting is the San Gabriel Valley city of La Puente. La Puente translates into “the bridge” and what Alma and her daughter Angel unknowingly strive to do is forge and cross the universal bridge between parental dreams and a child’s aspirations.
The play is set the evening before Angel is about to take that all-important SAT test. A top score will fuel her admittance to UC Davis.
But Alma has her suspicions as she arrives home early from work, stealthily entering their apartment at the start of the play: Is Angel at home? Is she really studying as hard for the test as she needs to?
This is the first of the many divides in their expectations. One of those is a notable disconnect: Alma projects a future for Angel as a hometown veterinarian; Angel sees herself becoming a zoologist and visiting Africa.
Alma herself is the embodiment of the aspirational immigrant. By herself, she was pregnant at 17 with Angel when she crossed the border.
Her goal was, and is, the prototypical better American life for them both, with social mobility requiring a constant push on an upward trajectory.
Angel, meanwhile, is framed by creeping doubts that seem hallmarks in Gen Z lives in the 2010s and 2020s.
She is no longer interested in taking the test nor in moving to an expensive university 450 miles north of their home.
Playwright Benjamin Benne has a skillful eye for these dynamics and familial interactions. He grew up in Hacienda Heights, the son of a previously undocumented Guatemalan woman.
The “write what you know” qualities here feel like they inform his two characters in their worldly challenges, the lack of citizenship for Alma and a lack of a clear life course for Angel.
A shared quality that empowers both of them is their ability to communicate freely with each other.
Yes, there are many challenges and struggles, but there is no underlying estrangement here — and this is never in doubt. Everything comes from a place of mutual love.
As theater, a core strength of this production comes from director Sara Guerrero and actors Marta Portillo (Alma) and Heather Lee Echeverria (Angel) in bonding the two performances in a naturalistic way, the characters feeling completely inhabited and fully realized.
Portillo’s Alma as mom is almost a quasi-dictatorial CEO of this organization where her sole underling’s actions and motives have to be scrutinized at the most basic of levels — for instance: how much money was wasted on that oversize, half-consumed bottle of orange soda found hidden away in the bedroom?
An entertaining and frantic physicality powers Portillo’s portrayal. Often as not, the actress bursts in mini gallop through the apartment’s small space, around the couch (which doubles as her bed), on her knees in the kitchen floor and breathlessly animated in engaging with her obstinate daughter.
Echeverria makes for a very believable 17-year-old, equal thirds cagey wise child, self-absorbed rebellious whelp and vulnerable, emotive, teen all at once.
The actress smoothly shifts through her own feelings while alternately combatting, placating and, always, loving the domineering woman who is the play’s center of gravity.
The show is enhanced with a few fleeting, quasi-mystical ambient elements.
As the house goes dark, the audience is under a starry overhead sky, hearing a sound montage — from spatial, instrumental music to the sound of an old train chugging along — which conveys the passage of time through eras until the present.
There is also a seemingly possessed television, blaringly disrupting the family’s interactions at a seeming demonic whim.
Scenic designer Christopher Scott Murillo has placed the event in a wonderfully tight and cluttered, but recognizably safe, home environment, a visual cocoon nurturing the two characters.
There are many visual details to gaze at. An example, underscoring the generational and cultural splits … on top of the kitchenette’s fridge, a big yellow box of Cheerios is simpatico next to a couple bottles of what appears to be unlabeled, homebrew salsa.
Lighting designer Kara Ramlow has strung a latticework of lovely, small twinkly lights above the stage and out over the front of the audience to help convey those ethereal touches. Melanie Falcón’s sound design is an impactful force, especially when those abrupt, jarring bursts from the satanic TV overwhelm onstage conversations.
Ultimately, “Alma” is a story of two women seeking to bridge their own gaps and create paths to make a way through their American lives. It’s a road that is paved with mutual caring, which, one hopes, can see them through whatever comes next.
‘Alma’
Rating: 3 stars (out of 4)
When: Through May 31. Regular performances: 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays, 3 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays
Where: Chance Theater, Fyda-Mar Stage, 5522 E. La Palma Ave., Anaheim
Tickets: $41-$49.
Information: 888-455-4212; chancetheater.com
