Review: 'La Llorona' features some fine acting and packs a wallop

Americans are swine and superstitions are real.

Those are two of the primary points made by La Llorona, a Love Story the drama being presented by Amphibian Productions at the Sanders Theatre in the Fort Worth Community Arts Center.

The play focuses on two couples, one Mexican and one American, whose lives become tragically entangled. Jeffrey (Jonathan Fielding) portrays the ugliest of Americans in his role as a corporate wonk who has been sent to Mexico to open a chain of taco stands.

He drags along his reluctant wife, Liz (Elizabeth Mason), and moves into the home of Carlos (Nicholas Urda) and Irma (Caroline Tamas), who have been forced to rent out their family estate because of peso devaluations and an eternally soft job market.

The scenes involving Carlos and Irma consist of brow-knitting, reassuring hugs and cliched dialogue. But those with the American couple crackle with electricity, thanks to better lines, the quiet evil that Fielding brings to his part, and the overall excellence of Mason's work.

Irma is the most sympathetic character in the show because the American-made vise squeezes her the hardest. But in embracing her, we are also required to accept the endless string of old wives' tales and superstitions by which she lives. .

If you are willing to look past them, there is some gripping pathos (especially in the often powerful second act) and also some well-placed comic relief (Jonathan's hapless handling of "the burrito problem" is hilarious).

But the main trouble with this script, written by Amphibian artistic director Kathleen Anderson Culebro, is that we have been here before. Presenting corporate America as greedy and soulless is not exactly a new approach. And the mix of reality with Irma's fantasies harks back to the have-it-both-ways world of magic realism, a literary movement that was popular 30 years ago.

There is outstanding acting to be seen in this show, the title of which means "the crying woman." And if you surrender to it entirely, you may well be moved by the characters' depthless pain. Just be aware that you are going to have to like being slapped in the face in the process.