gaps between the Roaring Fork Valley's Latino community and those who wish to learn more about the culture, customs and, most importantly, the human strengths and frailties that bind us all together. The play focuses on the universality of emotions such as guilt, self-importance, social climbing and deceit. It's a play for our time – and for all time. It's a play about Mexican culture – and the similarities of people worldwide. The sparse yet effective stage invites you to enter the drawing room of the parish priest of a small Mexican village. The choice of set design, like a good book, lets the audience create the setting rather than having an overdone set do it for them. And from the first line, the players, eight in all, do an extremely credible job in creating a cadre of characters that are, all at once, believable, petty, kind and comical.
Valerie Haugen is thoroughly convincing as Matea, the priest's right-hand-woman, who transforms herself from a meek little mouse into an entirely different woman - powerful, sharp and confident - by the end the play. She is the hub of the actions, reactions and sometimes despicable behavior of the townspeople. Richard Lyon, another TRTC alum, has almost a holy presence on stage – with healthy doses of Solana's comic wit perpetually running through his character. Sharon Ostreicher, Tamara Cleverly and Bonnie Cobb perform alarmingly authentic renditions of obnoxious, laughable, "religious" women: Tomasa, Aurora and Enedina.
Kudos goes to TRTC's Lon Winston for delivering this play to English and Spanish-speaking theater-goers. Theater is, after all, a main source of understanding people from all cultures and from all walks of life.