The team from Playing Latinx were on social media last week asking whether critics wanted to engage with the show. It is not rare that a company feels the lack of reviews during the fringe, but it is strange that this show has not been heavily covered. It is an easy show to review: funny, it has a fierce political heart, and it plays very well in the context of the fringe that is reconsidering issues of representation this year.
With a format that is part sketch comedy and part lecture, Playing Latinx is sharp and precise – apart from the audience participation interludes, which slow down the pace – trolling the stereo typing of performers from Latin America. It identifies the limited range of roles and emotions that are on offer and the apparent inability of casting directors to recognise the differences between Peruvians, Mexicans, Colombians or any other country south of Texas. By exploding stereotypes into comic characterisations, Guido Garcia Lueches laughs at the laziness of representation, before suddenly dropping character to express the contradictions involved in presenting Latinx caricatures which are both a product of racism and reinforce bigoted values.
That this bigotry goes on to inform both the political decisions made about migrants and the social assumptions in casual conversations lends Playing Latinx a bite. And by presenting stereotypes in the form of a lecture, Guido Garcia Lueches finds a dramaturgy capable of containing seriousness and comedy. The seminar is supposed to demonstrate how a Latinx performer, or person, can achieve success, primarily by emphasising those characteristics associated with South and Central America, and taking on aspects of the diverse cultures for profit. Like the show itself, these stereotypes put white people at ease. The conclusion of the show is that the best way to survive in the UK is to climb inside a box which has been prepared by British attitudes. And, of course, this box needs to be broken.
Guido Garcia Lueches is a wonderfully charismatic performer, even when he exaggerates his accidents, his history, his name, his gestures. From a sexy pool boy to a mysterious Shaman, Lueches inhabits these cameos, articulating disgust at the marginalisation of his potential and identity. The humour is targeted, taking apart the sexualisation and fictionalisation of identity and how otherness is exoticpsed. In a moment that recalls a comment from another show about racial identity, Rama Lama Ding Dong, the ironic nature of casual racism is exposed: although the colour of skin signs the individual, the colour of skin itself is rarely enough to locate the individual’s racial identity. And so, while Roshi Nasehi was asked about her ancestry by a rather posh Englishwoman, who attempted to excuse her interest on the grounds that she could be from anywhere between Italy and South East Asia, Lueches is cast in roles that are vaguely Latinx. The desire to pigeonhole by race is subverted by the inability of the racist to understand pigmentation.
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