Review Roundup: Danny Tejera's TOROS at Second Stage Theater

Second Stage Theater just celebrated opening night of TOROS by Danny Tejera and directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch. This limited engagement runs through August 13 at the McGinn/Cazale Theater on Broadway at 76th Street. Toros was presented as a part of the Judith Champion New Voices Reading Series in 2022.

In Toros, three international late-20-somethings (and one dying golden retriever) hang out in a garage in Madrid. They smoke pitis, get drunk, argue about the music, and figure out what version of reality to believe in.

It stars Juan Castano (2ST’s A Parallelogram), Abubakr Ali (Anything’s Possible), b (American (Tele)Visions) and Tony Award-winner Frank Wood (Great Society).

Let's see what the critics had to say...

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Jackson McHenry, Vulture: To that end, there’s an evasive quality to the characters that sometimes gets the better of Tejera. These well-educated adult children are “generally good at hiding what they’re feeling,” he notes in the script, and almost respectfully, he tends to let them slip around one another instead of colliding and cracking open. The scenes get shorter in the play’s second half with a few blackouts that come when there’s still juice left in a conversation. Castano, b, and Ali have developed a spiky, believable old-frenemy chemistry, and they look as if they’d be able to go deeper in that dynamic if Tejera just kept them all in the garage longer. Toros doesn’t wrap up as much as dissolve — though that is the right choice structurally. Wood reappears (this time not as the dog), mistakes are brushed away with little consequence, and an odd kind of order reasserts itself. It’s all unreally, efficiently managed, which to these people is normal.

GIllian Russo, New York Theatre Guide: All the characters, to a degree, feel underwritten. Toro and Andrea exist mostly as collateral damage in Juan’s self-destruction. They do get the play’s best scene: a vulnerable conversation in which they reveal their Tragic Backstories and probe meaty ideas about whether life is worth living — or "real" at all — if we're always doing what's expected of us. But one scene does not a full character — or thought-provoking play — make, especially as their last onstage conversation is mostly small talk. To Tejera's credit, neither their lofty debate nor their awkward patter feels like a playwright's hand at work; he has a knack for authentic dialogue. Director Gaye Taylor Upchurch's production is nonetheless buoyed by its cast, particularly the effortlessly magnetic b. Alongside the trio is Frank Wood as Juan's aging dog, Tica. While Wood is commendably game, the presence of the dog is mostly distracting, her intended significance unclear until she, too, becomes a pivotal plot device in service of Juan’s arc.

Kobi Kassal, Theatrely: It’s all brought together by director Gaye Taylor Upchurch who is able to weave the narrative with focused direction that helps keep the flow steadily moving along on track just as Juan’s DJ beats pump throughout the garage. The mixture of naturalism thanks to an excellent set by Arnulfo Maldonado versus high theatricality: sex by interpretive dance, a car made up of old boxes, a Tony winner playing a dying pet is what makes Toros such an intriguing new work. Some development on the relationships can tidy up some plot points, but Tejera is very much starting to make a name for himself as a new voice in the American theatre. I look forward to what comes next. 

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