David A.

Tomblin

The Fall of Wallace Winter is, on the whole, an interesting play with many opportunities

for strong physical and vocal choices on the part of the actors. The drastic mood change between

the two acts and the strong, distinct personalities in each of the members of the Winter household

allowed for several bold interpretive choices. The first act of the play emphasized the kitschy,

Leave It to Beaver aesthetic and how it was forcibly thrust into the lives of the characters. The

opening scene where Daisy was pushing each family member into the household and directing

them into tableau made the decision very clear.

Julian Ochoas decision as Irwin to make good use of his large frame and struggle against

the initial placement proved to be both a very strong comedic choice as well as an interesting bit

of foreshadowing to his later character development and the overarching theme of destiny in the

play. Abel Garcias Wallace and Nancy Batress June both made excellent use of overstated

physical holds (e.g. his crooked back and loping gait) and vocal habits (e.g. her exasperated

breathing while describing the wrestling team in their singlets) in their characters which

projected the sitcom-esque style of the performance very well.

The second act allowed the actors to take the existing holds and habits that their

characters had exhibited and slowly break them down as the faade of their perfect family life

crumbled. Garcias Wallace slowly devolved into a shell of a man, physically retreating into his

own body and collapsing his upper body in on itself as his soft, incessant ranting at the end of the

play reinforced the titular fall. Batres had one of my favorite moments of vocal freedom in the

play just as her June realized that she wanted to leave Wallace for Harry Bottoms. Wallace

confronts her about it, saying that chose Harry after all. Batres allowed her voice, which had

previously been hanging out in her upper register and been, if anything, a little bit shrill, to drop

down into her chest and allowed the caricature of the perfect, but sexually frustrated mother, to

melt away as she told him that she also had needs that she needed to satisfy. For the first moment
 David A. Tomblin

in the play, it seemed that both Batres and her character allowed themselves to be a multi-

dimensional person with real needs and desires, and all of that came through in one line.
Angelina Castillo did a superb job as the storyteller, Daisy. Her careful, methodical

actions gave a clear message that she was in control of the action as it was happening. While the

other characters also had very stylized movements indicative of who they were meant to be

within the scheme of the story, Castillos Daisy took on an almost feline quality that allowed her

to slink in and out of the action, with an auctioneers bark of a voice that carried the audience

along with it as she told the story of the Winters. This made her vocal break in act two that much

more shocking as she realized she had lost hold of the reins shed tied to the characters.
Certain physical choices were, unfortunately, not as effective in conveying the story.

Ochoas movements as Irwinner fit, given the characters bout of extreme megalomania, but

they seemed to carry through both from his earlier moments and through into his later scenes.

His hands appeared to be rather stiff, and he often repeated the same five gestures with them in

various combinations regardless of what was happening in the scene. While this could be

explained away by saying that Irwin is constantly acting in order to please his father Wallace,

Ochoas particular actions did not seem to match his character in a large portion of his scenes. He

allowed himself to drop it, for the most part, when he reverted back from Irwinner to Irwin and

confessing his actual feelings to Belle Bottoms, and the evident physical freedom Ochoa

displayed in the scene beautifully conveyed the moment of honesty Irwin was having with

himself.
The plays transition from kitsch to calamity, from stylized voices and caricatured

physical holds to naturalized dejection, was overall successfully conveyed by the actors.