A vivid, real-life modern tragedy

In 'Guac,' the father of a Parkland shooting victim tells of his son's short life and death.

- CHARLES McNULTY THEATER CRITIC

DONNA F. ACETO MANUEL Oliver in the one-man show "Guac."

The image of a grieving parent is not an uncommon sight on the dramatic stage.

Euripides, whom Aristotle called “the most tragic of the poets,” returns to the figure of the grief-stricken parent in “Hecuba,” “Hippolytus” and “The Bacchae,” to cite just a few disparate examples of characters brought to their knees by the death of their child.

Shakespeare offers what has become the defining portrait of this inconsolable experience in “King Lear.” Cradling the lifeless body of his murdered daughter, Lear can do nothing but repeat the word "never" five times, the repetition driving home the irrevocable nature of loss.

In tragedy, the protagonist is often plagued by guilt for his role, however inadvertent or inescapable, in the catastrophe that befell his loved one. Theseus in "Hippolytus" and Agave in "The Bacchae" have reason to feel that they have blood on their hands. Lear, though "more sinned against than sinning," recognizes only after it's too late the error in judgment that led to the devastation from which there can be no return.

The difference with "Guac," the one-man performance work at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, is that Manuel Oliver isn't just playing a bereaved father. He is one.