Review: LAUGHS IN SPANISH at The Seattle Rep

Dear Readers, it’s always a dangerous proposition for a playwright to put the emotion they want you to feel in the title of their play.  One such show would be Alexis Scheer’s “Laughs in Spanish”, currently playing at the Seattle Rep.  If you’re going to tell me there are laughs, then there had better be laughs.  And while there were some laughs, there were not enough and, really, only some chuckles.

Sheer’s play touts itself as “part telenovela, part whodunnit, and all heart” as we focus on a Miami art gallery.  The owner of the gallery, Mariana (Beth Pollack) is about to put on a career defining show.  However, the night before the show opening, all the paintings are stolen.  To make matters worse, her movie star mother, Estella (Diana Burbano), has just swept into town with a mysterious agenda.  Then there’s Mariana’s old high school friend and crush, Jenny (Cheyenne Barton), who shows up as Estella’s new assistant.  Meanwhile Carolina (Diana Garle), Mariana’s intern, is trying to get her to replace the stolen paintings with works of her own, while her cop boyfriend Juan (Gabriell Salgado) investigates the theft.

Sounds like a recipe for hijinks to ensue, right?  Well, they do, but not enough, and not anything that I didn’t see coming a mile away.  The plot and script read less like a telenovela or whodunnit and more like a rehash of a tired sitcom.  There are a lot of cliché moments, an estranged mother and daughter, the reemergence of a former crush, and an unexpected pregnancy.  And all presented with the urgency of a grocery list.  Not to mention a “whodunnit” that was fairly obvious and was revealed almost immediately.  If you want a telenovela, then give me melodrama.  If you want a whodunnit, then give me mystery and suspense.  And if you say you have laughs, then give me LAUGHS, not just a few chuckles. 

The pacing of the show from director Dámaso Rodríguez, moves things along, but feels wonky and the deliveries feel forced as if they were waiting for laughs that didn’t come.  And the forced nature of the comedy wasn’t helped by the cloud of anger permeating the show from one of the leads, Pollack.  It’s a comedy so to have someone written and performed as so angry at the center of it all saps all the lightheartedness from the room.

That’s not to say there wasn’t fun to be had.  As I said, there were some laughs.  It’s a cute show.  And some of the performers were engaging.  Burbano was a lot of fun as the vainglorious center of attention mother.  And Salgado as the doting, hunky boyfriend was a bright spot in the piece.  But those few bright spots couldn’t make the show shine.

I could see what they were going for, and I wish they had made it there.  They made it part way, but didn’t quite stick the landing.  And so, with my three-letter rating system, I give “Laughs in Spanish” at the Seattle Rep a “not quite ready yet” MEH.  And I must mention, the title is a bit misleading.  It refers to one line in the show and doesn’t really make sense.  To be clear, there is some Spanish in the show but it’s mostly in English.  And worse, it sets the show up for some disappointment.