The new show at the Goodman Theatre, first developed in Dallas by the Prism Movement Theater, is about lucha libre, the hugely popular Mexican form of wrestling, second only to soccer in that nation’s hierarchy of professional sports.
Most plays about athletic events struggle to credibly depict the actual sport itself, for obvious reasons, and thus are forced to spend their playing time in locker rooms, offices, hallways and the corners of stadiums.
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Not this one.
“Lucha Teotl,” written and directed by Christopher Llewyn Ramirez and Jeff Colangelo, gets down to the mat. The actor-wrestlers in the piece, masked as per the tradition, smack each other around with striking intensity, a much-repeated action intensified by the authentic sprung-floor wrestling ring the Goodman has built inside its Owen Theatre.
You hear the hit and then the referee hits the floor and you hear that. Plus you get all of the personal hype videos that go with the genre, a form of entertainment that relies on melodramatic characters, with hero and villain improvising their way toward a predetermined outcome.
Kudos to the show for delivering the full-blown experience. But that begs the question as to whether you want the experience.
I get the appeal of wrestling. I was taken to pro wrestling occasionally as a kid and I’ve seen lucha libre, too.
I’d also add the caveat that the Goodman had the misfortune to open this show Monday night at a most distressing geopolitical moment — so much so that for me, my head was filled with how badly we need the healing power of theater, only to find myself at a show where ginned-up audience members were cheering and booing a character who appeared, theatrically, to have broken the leg of another. Not the Goodman’s fault and critics aren’t supposed to carry that stuff into the theater. Still.
I’ve no issue with the foundational notion. I’ve long thought regional theaters should be offering more popular entertainment with broad appeal. Chicago is filled with folks with ties to Mexico who enjoy the traditions of lucha libre; it’s an important statement to open the doors of the Goodman to everyone and diversity should not just mean academically oriented plays, as often it does.
But the aptly titled “Lucha Teotl” is a bit too much in love with lucha libre, roving fancams and all, to be able to zoom out sufficiently to put all of this in enough artistic context. What we see here is a full-on recreation of the form, thus begging another question: Why not just go and see the real thing? (You can, on Oct. 22 at the Cicero Stadium; impactwrestling.com).
Toward the end of the 90 minutes, the characters, who’ve been all in, suddenly start talking about the problems with the form and there is talk of being true to the ancestors and of hoping for reconciliation. Fair enough. But it’s not yet an interwoven theme.
The show hasn’t decided how invested it wants to be in its overall narrative; it’s tricky, because lucha libre is based on successive rounds of competitors, contests hyped up, played out and then quickly won or lost with a pin to the floor. Building an arc from that is hard. And since so much here involves the dial over on the far right, and the show’s comentaristas (Ramón Camin and Rinska Carrasco) so badly want the audience to get fired up, it’s hard for the show to build to any kind of climax. All of that could be achieved I think, with more nuanced and varied attention to the theatrical possibilities of the piece and fewer worries about emulating the wrestling event itself. And with less video.
Still, if you have fun watching real lucha libre, I think you’ll be impressed with Natalia Christabelle, Luis “Aski” Palomino and Paloma “Starr” Vargas, all the real deal. And the excellent circus-skilled performers Molly Hernández and Jean Claudio are on hand, too. Claudio’s El Referee is funny, charming and the most poignant presence, interestingly enough. Big possibilities there.
Replete with Maestro de Ceremonia Víctor Maraña, “Lucha Teotl” brings wrestling to the Goodman and credibly so. Now we’re in a theater. What do these artists really want to do here?
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
Review: “Lucha Teotl” (2.5 stars)
When: Through Oct. 29
Where: The Goodman’s Owen Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St.
Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Tickets: $20-$70 at 312-443-3825 and goodmantheatre.org
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