THE THEATRE - THE OUTSIDERS

“American (tele)visions” and Little Amal.

- VINSON CUNNINGHAM

There are lots of screens onstage these days. The intrusion of video into drama can be a nod to the visual culture of surveillance, or to the uncanny fantasy that our private and public lives are somehow being secretly filmed for a later wide release. Often, though, the gesture is underdeveloped, a wan attempt at multimedia art, perhaps the result of insecurity about the ever-increasing dominance of TV. Plus, actors can have their cake and eat it, too: they can play big and also get their closeup moments.

“American (tele)visions,” by Victor I. Cazares, at New York Theatre Workshop, is the rare recent show whose use of—and constant references to—video feels absolutely necessary to its story. It’s about a Mexican immigrant family who live in a cramped double-wide trailer, and whose mind-numbing consolation is a small TV that casts its glow on a modest set of brownish furniture. The mentally absent, rawly mourning father, Octavio (Raúl Castillo), sits in front of it as if in devotion at a shrine. The family lives near a Walmart that is more of a mythic space than a discount store. They spend more time in its aisles than they do at home. Early on, in a scene at the store, the daughter, Erica (Bianca (b) Norwood), shouts through the P.A. system:

I’ve been waiting for you.

Welcome to the first Wal-Mart in the entire United States Universe. I’m the voice of perpetual consumption.