'Am I Roxie?' centers on a Latina's dilemma

Roxana Ortega recalls the inner turmoil of being a caregiver in one-woman show.

- CHARLES McNULTY THEATER CRITIC

JEFF LORCH ROXANA ORTEGA looks at the roller-coaster ride of eldercare in "Am I Roxie?"

In “Am I Roxie?,” a world-premiere one-woman show at the Geffen Playhouse, Roxana Ortega, a working actor and alum of the Groundlings Theatre’s Sunday Company, revisits the period in her life when she was the caregiver for her mother, whose memory was unraveling.

When Ortega’s father died of a sudden heart attack outside the post office, she was unprepared for the consequences. He had been protecting the family from her mother’s decline.

An immigrant from Peru who had relinquished her dreams of acting to raise a family, Carmen had a special bond with Ortega. When little Roxana was growing up in Fullerton, her mother would improvise operas while fixing breakfast. Together, they dreamed theatrical dreams.

Carmen has many sisters — “Picture the Housewives of Beverly Hills, but in Canoga Park” — but none were able to take her in. Ortega’s siblings, married with children, were similarly unable.

Not having kids of her own deprived Ortega of the one excuse her family would have recognized. Yet she still wanted to have kids, though not before she found the right husband and made some headway in a career marked by small triumphs, such as booking commercials and webisodes. Was she really going to put her life on hold for a few years?