Give Me Carmelita Tropicana!

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The term “alter ego” is defined as a second self or different version of oneself: such as a trusted friend, the opposite side of a personality (as in Clark Kent and his alter ego Superman), or a counterpart (a fictional character that is the author’s alter ego). In Alina Troyano and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ fantastical Give Me Carmelita Tropicana! all these definitions apply.

In Carmelita Tropicana’s (or should we say Alina Troyano’s) own words on the Carmelita Tropicana website we find, “As a writer and performer, I have straddled the worlds of performance art and theater. I use irreverent humor and fantasy as subversive tools to challenge cultural stereotypes and rewrite history from multiple perspectives. By performing hyperbolic feminine and masculine personas, as well as numerous animals, insects, and fantasy creatures, I challenge historical and narrative authority. My work addresses political issues and looks at the intersections that exist between ethnicity, sexuality, gender, race and class.” In this play we are given generous glimpses of this fiery personality and vivid imagination that thankfully for audiences doesn’t appear to have adhered to any boundaries.

At the top of the play we meet Alina in a law office. She is there to sign over her “Living Intellectual Property” to a former student of hers, the playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, as she has decided to retire the character of Carmelita. Branden claims Alina said she was going to kill her, but she says he either misheard her or perhaps her saying that was just a knee jerk reaction to Alina having a bad year. The problem is that Carmelita is in Alina’s ear (or somewhere thereabouts) not leaving her alone.

With the contract in front of her, Alina and Carmelita have a running conversation going on that is causing concern for Branden and the lawyers. If she’s not of sound mind and body, sitting here “talking to herself,” perhaps she shouldn’t be signing a contract? Branden has a lot at stake as he has just taken on a massive loan to enter into this agreement with Alina. If she’s certifiable, where does that leave him? As Alina freezes, not even mid-signature, she has an aside that takes us, the audience, into the vast and utterly hysterical rabbit hole of the play.

We are transported to Alina’s lower East Side apartment where the conversation about “killing” or “retiring” Carmelita gets fleshed out a little more. Thanks to Jacobs-Jenkins wearing a stocking as a mask and crawling through Alina’s fire escape window stage-whispering “Give Me Carmelita Tropicana!” followed by her knocking him unconscious with a bust of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, we also get transported to another plane of existence, Phantasmagoria. That is where all of Carmelita’s friends (Alina’s other stage creations: Martina, a cockroach; Arriero, a horse into wearing S&M apparel; Pingalito, the poet laureate of the M15 bus in Havana; as well as real-life characters who happen to be using Phantasmagoria as a quarantine pod: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a 17th century nun and poet; María Irene Fornés,  the Cuban-American playwright and theatre director; and Walt Whitman, the American poet) continue to live and thrive, though while there Alina refers to the real world as “another plane of existence.” Before it gets too confusing, Branden corrects her, for our benefit as well as their own.

The true Phantasmagoria is explained in a monologue by an oversized (and still growing throughout the play) goldfish named what else, Goldfish. The goldfish is a leftover memory from when the young Branden was a student at New York University in Troyano’s performance art class, as taught by Carmelita Tropicana. (Alina used the alter ego for teaching and writing purposes thereby creating a history of a lot of blurred lines. When is she Alina and when is she Carmelita?). In a performance art piece about the privatization of water, Branden sucked all the water out of a goldfish bowl leaving its inhabitant gasping for breath. Goldfish has never forgotten (or forgiven) Branden, making himself known squirming (normal size) out of Branden’s mouth. In each successive appearance he gains in stature with his showing in the final moments of the play something out of classic horror films.

As long as Carmelita can keep Alina and Branden away from the real world where the contract sits waiting to be signed, Carmelita is in control of her own future. The contract aside, Alina and Branden still need to return to the real world so they can live their own lives. Carmelita doesn’t give up even when they somehow escape Phantasmagoria to return to the law office. She bounces from Alina to Branden to inhabiting both of the lawyers, and even the receptionist. You can’t blame a girl, er, alter ego, for trying!

The success of this play and our ability to navigate the ride relies heavily on the flawless cast led by Troyano herself. She shepherds us through every turn of the script and we willingly follow her everywhere she takes us. One of the standout moments is when Branden is whisked away to the Havana nightclub El Pescadito in Phantasmagoria. Alina as Carmelita entertains at the piano dressed as Bola de Nieve, a legendary Afro-Cuban cabaret artist. “Bola” performs a song “Messie Julian” containing lyrics “Yo soy negro social, soy intellectual, y chic” with modified references to Branden. When he asks what the song is about, Carmelita reveals herself to be half-bear ready to attack him.

Ugo Chukwu as Branden shares in the heavy lifting of carrying the alter ego of Carmelita, and the feathered headdress fits perfectly! There are times protecting his own interest (getting ownership of the intellectual property) makes Branden come off as a villain, but Chukwu finds an appropriate balance between the objectives of outright ownership (no mustache twirling needed) and preserving what he feels is an important piece of theater that he has an emotional connection to. The result is a nuanced performance that is constantly engaging.

Will Dagger has been acknowledged as one of the bright new comedic actors on theater stages the past few seasons yet he finds ways to defy those superlatives here. He is witty as Ean, the lawyer representing Branden, but a consummate scene stealer as Goldfish, and then again as Arriero, conquistador Hernán Cortés’ pacifist horse in full leather S&M drag. His Walt Whitman would have fit very comfortably lighting up in Woodstock. Keren Lugo is disarming as Dede, the lawyer representing Alina, hysterically funny as Martina, the sex kitten cockroach, and the swaggering butch Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Octavia Chavez-Richmond is a charmer as the mansplaining Pingalito enamored of the very recently widowed Martina, and hers is a serene traje de luces-wearing María Irene Fornés.  Her very real put-upon receptionist Felicia is spot on.

Director Eric Ting had very little realism to play with here but those few moments were golden and could touch us deeply. The Phantasmagoria scenes required the talents of a ringmaster and Ting was absolute in rising to the occasion. Ting had exceptional design colleagues on his team. Mimi Lien and Tatiana Kahvegian, co-scenic designers, did wonders with the limited space on Walker Street. The law office meeting room pushed back and revealed a real lower East Side New York living room and when that set moved it opened onto the brightly colored Phantasmagoria.

Greg Corbino’s costume and puppet designs were imaginative and extraordinary. The ever changing goldfish puppets got our attention before Dagger said a word. The eyewear for Martina warranted a second look to realize they weren’t really sunglasses but insect eyes. Troyano had an outfit with the names of all of the theaters she performed in written into the fabric. The outfit for Arriero would have been de rigueur in S&M dungeons anywhere. Barbara Samuels’ lighting design was supportive to the display of colors and sensitive to darker scenes, as in Alina’s apartment.

Give Me Carmelita Tropicana! shines a reverential light on a time when there were exciting things happening in venues far away from Broadway with artists having celebrated careers out of creating a lot of art from very little. They influenced future generations for decades, as was the case with Jacobs-Jenkins studying with Troyano at NYU. Last year’s Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play went to Second Stage Theater’s production of his play Appropriate, but he never lost sight of what made him the creative soul he is today as witnessed in this powerful footnote for Mr. Chukwu at the end of this play, “Now you’re probably asking yourself, ‘What’s this play about?’ To which I might reply, ‘Interesting…You see, there was a time in my theatergoing life where I didn’t go to plays because I needed them to be ‘about’ anything. I didn’t read reviews. I didn’t really read much of anything. I went for the ‘experience.’ I went because there was something almost mystical for me in the act of sitting with a bunch of strangers in the dark and hallucinating together a thing that wasn’t really happening.” And…lights out.

Give Me Carmelita Tropicana! (extended through December 22, 2024)

Soho Rep, 46 Walker Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, visit http://www.sohorep.org

Running time: two hours without an intermission