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La Chunga

Article  in  Theatre Journal · December 1994

DOI: 10.2307/3209078

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Review
Author(s): Catherine Diamond
Review by: Catherine Diamond
Source: Theatre Journal, Vol. 46, No. 4 (Dec., 1994), pp. 544-545
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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544 / Performance Review

Daniel, a homosexual. She assures us that should

their marriage fail, a solid friendship will remain to
comfort her. Teenager Fergus shares with us his
need for far more space and experience in his
sexual maturing. Finding the Sun's characters, sin-
gly or in pairs, confide to the audience their private
terrors. Their entanglements explore our culture's
failed intimacies.

Signature Theatre's finely honed production of

Sand gives the audience the experience of the broad
spectrum of human fragility: fear of closeness,
wariness of sexual differences, obsession with self,
and suspicion of life.

JEANE LUERE
The University of Northern Colorado

LA CHUNGA. By Mario Vargas Llosa.

Tanghalang Pilipino at Tanghalang Huseng
Batute, Cultural Center of the Philippines,
Manila. 14 January-6 February.

When it was announced that the air conditioner

would be turned off in the little theatre, no one in
the audience anticipated just how hot and sultry Marisa Tinsay, Olga Natividad, and R. J. Leyran
the atmosphere was about to become. The resident in La Chunga.
company of the Cultural Center of the Philippines,
Tanghalang Pilipino, gave an intoxicating, hyp-
notic performance of Peruvian playwright and poet
Mario Vargas Llosa's La Chunga. There are obvious As the past becomes present, it is divulged that
affinities between the Philippines and Latin Ameri- she is the whore of Josefino, the toughest of the
can countries--hundreds of years of Spanish domi- men at the table, who has a nasty habit of flipping
nation and a modem history plagued by civil open his switchblade in front of the faces of the
strife--and La Chunga explores the underbelly of a others. He shows his possession of Meche, flaunt-
particular Spanish inheritance, machismo. ing her to the men and La Chunga, while humiliat-
ing her at the same time. But then he loses in the
Set in a small town bar, four men sit around a
card game, and when he suggests to La Chunga
table drinking and gambling, while the proprietor,
that she take Meche in exchange for a loan, she
La Chunga, looks on indifferently from her Olym-
agrees. La Chunga leads Meche upstairs to her
pian rocking chair. The scene seems eternal, as bedroom. From that moment the play spirals in-
though she could have been rocking, thinking, ward.
watching for a hundred years in thousands of
small villages throughout the latin world. How- Having been denied the details of the truth, the
ever, the men begin taunting her, asking her about men create their own in this replay. Driven by
an event in the past when she spent the night with curiosity and seduced by their own desires, each
a woman in her bedroom above the bar. When she one uses his imagination to enter the bedroom at
refuses to indulge them, the past suddenly slips his peril. They crawl, strut, limp, bulldoze their
into this static yet tense present. The woman, way into the women's privacy, but each one is
Meche, a beautiful young prostitute, enters, stum-psychologically stripped by the two women who,
bling backward into the tavern, facing a blinding at the end, still preserve their own mystery. The
light that seems to be forcing her into this smother- frail, delicate Meche, an alien catalyst who knows
ing environment that her presence immediatelymore than the men will ever guess, stumbles back
throws out of kilter. out into the world the way she came in.

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 PERFORMANCE REVIEW / 545

Never have I witnessed a performance of such his physical overpowering of her, it is she who
unrelenting sexual intensity; as Philippine critic wears the quite smile of triumph.
Basilio Esteban S. Villaruz said, it is "one long
The two-tiered set by Ricardo Cruz contrasted
screw of bare bawdy and brutal emotion, turning
the rough-hewn furniture of the bottle-littered tav-
deep in one's gut. The play is a kind of rowdy
ern with the sparse but feminine bedroom of La
disemboweling very close to the groin." While the
Chunga. The painted scrim that veiled the bed-
men are individually cajoled, tormented, teased
room served two purposes. When not lit, it was the
into revealing their sickest dreams and most cow-
upper wall of the tavern, but when lit from within,
ardly fears, La Chunga's desire remains elusive
the scrim created the appropriate sense of a murky
and ambiguous. She is seen bedding Meche, but
fantasy world where not all dreams are met with
her reasons for taking the girl are never exposed. Is
anticipated fulfillment.
it rebellion, sadism, love, protection? The women
are so multifaceted, so chameleon that to call theirs Tanghalang Pilipino's La Chunga was a happy
a lesbian attraction is only to label it, not to under-
combination of excellent acting, imaginative direct-
stand all its ramifications.
ing, and a provocative, gripping script. Even though
it was performed in Tagalog, of which I know not a
The cast of six was as tight as one could wish.
word, I understood too much. It was frightening.
Each of the men was highly individualized in his
body, voice, movements, and relations with the CATHERINE DIAMOND
others, while at the same time all were incarnations Soochow University
of machismo. The actors performed with such lack
of inhibition, their characters were such convincing
manifestations of desire and helplessness, their
THE 18TH ANNUAL HUMANA FESTIVAL
mutual humiliation was so painful to watch, that
one was forced to wonder at one's own perverted OF NEW AMERICAN PLAYS. Actors The-
fascination with the process. Olga Natividad as atre of Louisville. 26-27 March 1994.
Meche was stunning as she wound her body around
Josefino like a lithe vine, vulnerable and seductive;
she played the game of each man and yet remained Distinguishing between new trends and the
trendy is never easy at the Actors Theatre of
inviolate, like some demon angel. Marisa Tinsay as
Louisville's Humana Festival of New American
La Chunga was aloof and introspective, waxing
Plays, which over the years has balanced the search
hot and cold. Beneath her feline grace there was
for new voices with commercial instincts and be-
always a quality of tough determination that itself
seemed to imply some deep, unbreachable despair come a playwright's gateway to the theatrical main-
which Meche only temporarily alleviates. stream. The 1994 festival seemed designed to make
that mainstream more inclusive by making lesbi-
Doused with magical realism, the text is aans and the idea of lesbianism ubiquitous. As
fantastical voyage into the depths of the sexual
Susan Miller put it in her autobiographical mono-
psyche that only a skilled imagination could pro-
drama, My Left Breast, "I'm a one-breasted, Jewish,
duce and only a cast of actors comfortable withbisexual, lesbian, menopausal mom. I'm the cover
themselves and each other could recreate with of Newsweek. I'm the hot issue. I'm in !!!"
such a hypnotic effect. The direction of Jose Estrella
Of the ten long and short plays presented at the
demonstrated a deft but powerful hand in probing
18th annual Humana Festival, five featured lesbian
all the difficult facets of the text. The production
characters and three were explicitly about coming
opened to the sound of men stamping their feet as
out-to your employer, to yourself, or to the audi-
they dance around the table, a sound both moving
ence. Jane Anderson's The Last Time We Saw Her,
and oppressive, one which later revealed the male
one of two ten-minute plays on the bill this year,
bonding to be both a truth and a lie.
captured corporate heterosexism in sharp focus.
In the final scene, Josefino casts Meche asideFran
and (Jennifer Hubbard), a fast-track, button-down
takes out his revenge directly on La Chunga for executive
her "somewhere in Ohio," informs her boss,
challenge to his male prerogative. But whenHunter
he (Fred Major), that she happens to be gay
forces her to have oral sex, the symbolic staging
and is going to make it known around the office in
preempts the violence of his action, for he hasanhis
effort to salvage her relationship with her lover
back to the audience as he thrusts himself against
and apartner. Superciliously compassionate, Hunter
pillar, while she stands stage center, face front,
proceeds to offer reasons why Fran's sexual prefer-
gulping from a beer bottle held vertically upright,
ence should remain a secret, to compare her situa-
sucking so hard as if to implode the bottle. Despite
tion to an employee with an alcohol problem, and

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