Review: GUAC at Kirk Douglas Theatre
Manny Oliver's celebration of his slain son is a "lots of people" show
Change the Ref is the name of the organization founded by Manny and Patricia Oliver following the death of their 17-year-old son, Joaquin in the 2018 school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, one of the deadliest school shootings in American history. With GUAC, the one-man play that he has written and performs both to honor his son and to push gun violence awareness, Manny Oliver is looking to change not just the ref, but the whole game.
GUAC is part recollection, part family biography, part party. Oliver, its shaggy-haired, paint-slinging MC, is no by-the-numbers grieving father, nor is he particularly concerned with the decorum of a stage performance. Those “no cell phones/no photos/no recordings” warnings that Angelino theater-goers hear before every performance? Ignore them, says Manny. Record, snap away and share what you capture. If this is what it takes to help spread the word about the gun violence epidemic, Guac’s dad is all for it. The action breaks so that, at Oliver’s instruction, we power up or unsilenced our cells to call someone who is important to us. Heck, at the opening night of GUAC’s LA run at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, Oliver glided over the fact that a few people were tuning into the outcome of the Dodgers-Brewers National League Championship series.
Co-written by Oliver and James Clements and directed by Michael Cotey, GUAC embraces its rough-around-the-edges persona without laboring to break new ground. The 100-minute evening has a narrative sequence and certainly an agenda. No standard issue one man show, this experience is – in the words of its enactor - a “lot of people show.” "What do you do when you lose a son?" Manny asks. "What do I do when I lose a son?" We'll come to find out, but firt things first.
Oliver introduces us to his family – his wife, daughter and grand-daughter all of whom are depicted as life sized photographic cut-outs on butcher paper. Here we have a family of immigrants, Venezuelans proud of their badass-ness. The last piece of paper is Joaquin, nicknamed “Guac,” a poetry, music and soccer-loving young man – his dad’s Best Friend - who was dropped off at school with the flowers he had bought for his girlfriend, and never came home. The cutout of Guac – handsome, serious-looking and so very young – remains on stage the duration of the performance. Manny, an artist as well as an advocate, uses it as a canvas, transforming it into street art.
Along the way, he’s telling stories of who Guac was and continues to be, of that awful day where the family’s concept of hope morphed from “I hope he was on the other side of the school” to “I hope he dropped his phone” to “I hope it was fast and painless.” Manny lived through a circumstance the likes of which no parent should ever have to experience, but recounting (and reliving) the loss of his son is not the point of this theatrical exercise.
Guac lives on, as do his mission-driven parents. They establish Change the Ref, attack the gun lobby, and Manny travels to Washington to bully his way into getting a meeting with President Biden.
As raw as Manny Oliver’s pain must still be, as effectively as he is able to convey how much his family has lost, GUAC is not an evening of horror and devastation. Manny, a wry and life-loving father, doesn’t want that. Wearing a t-shirt, shredded jeans and his son’s sequined pink kicks, Manny wants us taking photos and bringing the GUAC program which unfolds into a “Stricter Gun Laws Now” sign to the No Kings rally. For the time in his company, he wants us to meet and celebrate – without mourning - his remarkable son. That we can easily do.
GUAC plays through Nov. 2 at 9820 Washington Blvd., Culver City.
Photo of Manny Oliver by Cameron Whitman
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