Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Michael John LaChiusa and Ellen Fitzhugh’s intimate musical two-hander LOS OTROS vividly charts love and life through the 20th century

• By drediman
• September 1, 2022
• No Comments

Last night, Michael John LaChiusa and Ellen Fitzhugh’s music theater piece Los Otros opened Off-Broadway at A.R.T./New York Theatres in Hell’s Kitchen. First staged about a decade ago at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, the intimate musical two-hander takes place over the course of a good chunk of the 20th century and is told through a series of alternatingly performed musical monologues. Set mainly in Southern California, the work tells the story of the parallel lives of the unlikely pair of Lillian and Carlos — an all-American girl and a Mexican immigrant — and the fascinating circumstances that bring them together (no spoilers here!).

Although the connection between the vividly painted numbers isn’t immediately apparent, it eventually becomes clear that their respective fates are intertwined. That being said, only in the work’s autumnal closing moments do the two characters perform together (in construction, the piece calls to mind Jason Robert Brown’s oft-performed The Last Five Years). With a running time of just 90 minutes, LaChiusa and Fitzhugh’s thoughtfully-crafted work is both concise and expansive. Indeed, each musical number moves the plot forward through the decades in artful yet confident strokes, often leading the two characters down unexpected paths as they explore the many facets of love and life. As with the best of LaChiusa’s work, the music has a searching, meandering, and decidedly uncommercial quality that puts it in astute synchronicity with the characters’ journeys. As manifested by J. Oconer Navarro’s exquisite music direction, Bruce Coughlin’s evocative orchestrations, and Ken Travis’s pristine sound design, the composer’s score shimmers.

Presented by Premieres NYC (which has brought us the Inner Voices series), the production is a simple yet classy affair, particularly as elegantly staged by director Noah Himmelstein (who recently staged another new musical, The Lucky Star at 59E59 Theaters) on essentially a bare stage with a few chairs and benches. As Lillian and Carlos, respectively, Luba Mason and Caesar Samayoa — both were recently seen on Broadway, she in Girl from the North Country and he in Come from Away — give resonant, committed musical and dramatic performances. They convincingly portray the passage of time through richly textured, gorgeously hued characterizations that have stuck with me.

RECOMMENDED
Off-Broadway, Musical
Premieres NYC / A.R.T./New York Theatres
1 hour, 30 minutes (without an intermission)
Through October 8