Review: DESTINY OF DESIRE at The Old Globe Is Both a Love Letter and A Parody of The Telenovela Genre

DESTINY OF DESIRE at The Old Globe may be a telenovela brought to life on the theatre stage, but you don’t need to be familiar with the genre in order to enjoy it.  Fan of the genre or not, this play is both a love letter to and a parody of the form of entertainment that is loved worldwide.  “Destiny of Desire” is playing at The Old Globe through June 25th.

This play by Karen Zacarias and directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, the play is fun, and clever, and subverts the very genre that is celebrated. 

The tricky part of bringing a telenovela to the theatre stage is the delicate balance of being extravagantly over the top while grounded enough to believe, and this truly ridiculously talented cast makes all of the plot twists, and turns sing (sometimes literally).

The play starts on a dark and stormy night (as if there could be any other way) and two women are separately brought to the hospital to give birth.  Fabiola (Bianca Marroquín) the beauty queen wife of Armando Castillo (Al Rodrigo) the wealthiest person in their town of Bellarica gives birth to a baby girl with a heart condition, and so convinces the corrupt doctor Mendoza (Julio Agustín) to switch the baby with the healthy baby just born to the couple in the next room.

Poor farmers Hortencia del Rio (Mandy Gonzalez) and her husband Ernesto (Luis Villabon) are presented with the sickly baby and are determined to give her the best possible life.

Fast forward 18 years later and now the girls are grown - Victoria del Rio (Emilia Suárez) dreams of becoming a doctor to help other people who are sick like her, and Pilar (Yesenia Ayala) is being raised a rich debutant but wants to go to school and be a poet.  When thrown together by another set of unexpected circumstances, they soon become close friends and find that life only gets more complicated as they try to figure out the truth of their lives.

That's just the setup, and trust me when I say that there are MANY twists and turns in this plot that I don’t want to spoil. It would be ideal if you have a telenovela/soap opera Bingo card filled with every crazy trope the genre has to see how fast you could mark things off.

While the play is not a musical, it does have musical moments courtesy of orchestrator and music director Ricky Gonzalez, which considering the heightened nature of a telenovela it doesn’t seem odd when some of them burst into song.  James Olivas, who plays Sebástian the prodigal Castillo son has a gorgeous solo with “Fallaste Corazón”  in the second act, while Gonzalez also shines with the heartfelt ballad “Rose in the Desert.”

Suárez and Ayala are great as the daughters trying to figure out what has become of their lives, while Rodrigo and Villabon play each other opposites in all ways (money, personality, and temperament) as their fathers. Nancy Ticotin is delightful as the witty Nun Sister Sonia who seems to always have a comment or a revelation at the ready.

However, there is only one who is destined to wear the crown as the most outrageous, and the most villainous, and that is the ridiculously talented and funny Bianca Marroquín as Fabiola.  Her energy and her ever-increasing levels of desperation throughout the show is a steady build all the way through to the end and she had the audience eating out of the palm of her hand the entire time.

Costumes by Karen Perry are beautiful; well fitted to the characters and the performers to allow them to move and dance as each scene requires.

The scenic design by Rachel Hauck features a two-story facade with a balcony, and grand staircase, as well as plenty of room for set pieces to move in and out easily.  This is the telenovela television set so the wings and crew are visible.  The lighting by Jane Cox and the projections by Hana S. Kim work together very well to round out the story by adding textures and photo credits as needed to the set. Sound design by  Robert Kaplowitz is equally world-building, though at times the balance between the singing and the band felt out of sync making it harder to hear what was being sung.

This show works because it is tightly performed by a talented cast who aren’t afraid to take everything to the extreme to make everything land. While it makes the most of the genre, it also subverts it facts directed to the audience pointing out how many of these seemingly insane events, are actually much more commonplace than one might think. While a majority of the choices work, the facts could be paired down in frequency to maintain a better story flow, and the commercial break “rewind” moments aren’t super clear as I heard people discussing them afterward.  

The show is so engaging and wonderfully funny that you may be left gasping out loud when plot points are revealed like the audience did the night I saw it.  If you miss this show the plot twist may be that you’ll regret it.

How To Get Tickets

DESTINY OF DESIRE is playing at The Old Globe through June 25th.  For ticket and showtime information go to www.theoldglobe.org

Photo Credit: Jim Cox