‘Laughs in Spanish’ Mixes Art World Antics with Heartfelt Drama
The saucy mother-daughter comedy "Laughs in Spanish" artfully balances Latino flavor, art world satire, and lesbian romance.
Even before the lights went up on 1st Stage’s vibrant new production of Alexis Scheer’s Laughs in Spanish, the writer already had a hit on her hands with the Miami-set mother-daughter comedy. Since its Denver world premiere in 2023, it has spawned nearly a dozen productions nationwide.
Marking its DMV debut, Elena Velasco’s snappy staging at 1st Stage aptly demonstrates the play’s broad appeal. A thriving but high-strung gallery director in the midst of a professional crisis clashes with her loving but grandiose actress mother who turns every situation into a one-woman show, promising a combustible scenario accessible to audiences anywhere.
The parent-child tension is generational, universal, and duly captured by Pepin as the harried gallerist Mariana and Fran Tapia as her colorfully overbearing Colombiana mom Estella. Their constant conflict is leavened somewhat by a light art heist subplot, humorous jabs at the Miami art scene, and a lesbian love interest for Mariana.
Underlying all that, their experiences — and those of Mariana’s intern Carolina (Lenny Mendez) and Carolina’s cop boyfriend Juan (Camilo Linares) — reflect the diverse tapestry of Miami’s Latino and immigrant communities. The play juggles a lot in 90 minutes, with Velasco’s direction pacing the company smoothly between fits of screwball ensemble action and moments of serious introspection.
The walls of Jessica Alexandra Cancino’s set, painted gallery white, keep pace with the transitions, shifting and rotating to configure different locations. Those bare surfaces also play a part, each wall displaying a tell-tale discoloration in the center marking where a large painting had previously hung.
There lies perhaps another key to this show’s proven programmability. If you’re going to set a play in a posh art gallery, turn the plot so that all the art’s been stolen. It benefits the budget, and stimulates the imagination, as the audience hears plenty about, but never sees, the paintings Mariana had intended to exhibit.
We do see her, Carolina, and Juan — and Estella, visiting from L.A. with her helpful assistant Jenny (Laura Artesi) — rally to get something up on those walls in time for that evening’s heavily promoted opening. Of course, it’s the eve of Art Basel Miami, and Mariana is expecting deep-pocketed collectors, like the oft-mentioned Goldbergs, and they, in turn, will be expecting to see paintings they can buy.
Scheer undermines the urgency of Mariana’s looming catastrophe with a few too many plot contrivances, and by providing a viable solution early on to the question of what the gallery will show on the night of their big opening. Consequently, this also resolves fairly early on the question of who stole the paintings and why.
Thus, having let the air out of the heist plot, Laughs in Spanish really has to deliver on the laughs and the relationships, as mother and daughter duel, and romantic couples are formed, dissolved, or strengthened.
The laughs tend to register more on the lower-case ha-ha scale, though, rather than capital-h hilarious. The cast seems to work hard towards hilarity, but the jokes don’t hit — they coast or miss.
Tapia’s over-the-top mom and Linares’ laidback cop, amusing in a two-hander scene together, deliver the funny most consistently. Tapia also brings grace and gravitas to Estella’s dramatic scenes, including an argument with Mariana over Estella’s frequent periods of absentee motherhood, and a beautifully shaped monologue asserting herself as the sum of her experiences as a woman, artist, immigrant, mother, and human being.
In this flamboyant TV and movie star — jokingly referred to as the “Latina Fey” of Colombian television — we find a courageous soul whose journey resonates soundly beyond the walls of one Miami art gallery.
Laughs in Spanish (★★★☆☆) runs through Dec. 29 at 1st Stage, 1524 Spring Hill Road, Tysons, Va. Tickets are $15 to $55. Call 703-854-1856, or visit www.1stStage.org.
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