Launching the 40th anniversary season of Latino Theater Company is Just Like Us, a rather timely play written by Karen Zacarías, inspired by a bestselling book by Helen Thorpe, and directed by Fidel Gomez.

While I had issues with the usage of the white reporter narrative that kept breaking the flow and that the play ended up being a bit too feel-good in its focus about undocumented immigrants, the play is a vibrant piece filled with a wonderful ensemble cast and a strong start to this unstoppable theater company that keeps putting out excellent original work.

This true coming-of-age story about four Latina girls is more timely now than ever, posing difficult, yet essential questions about what makes us American. Reporter Helen Thorpe (Elyse Mirto) follows the lives of four Latina girls in Denver who straddle two worlds: Clara (Noelle Franco) and Elissa (Valerie Rose Vega) hold legal documents, while Yadira (Newt Arlandiz) and Marisela (Blanca Isabella) do not. Against the odds, each finds her way into a good college, but the hurdles only mount from there. Student loans are not an option when you don’t have a Social Security number, and if your parents face deportation, your siblings may be moving into your dorm.

The core group performance made up of Blanca Isabella, Noelle Franco, Valerie Rose Vega, and Newt Arlandiz provide such a driving life force to this play as we see their friendship and sisterhood develop over the years. I absolutely believe their chemistry and the actors are just infectious as they have such a great time with each other onstage. Backed by a fantastic ensemble cast of Brenda Banda, Oscar Emmanuel Fabela, Saul Rodriguez and Sari Sanchez who each put on a impressive array of characters, these actors were just a delight to watch. Elyse Mirto also does a wonderful job being the narrator of this play despite the major difficulties in how her reporter character was written, which I will get more into.

It is the fact that a white woman reporter is used as the narrator of this piece about undocumented immigrants that ends up becoming the biggest issue of this play as for starters, it constantly broke the flow of the play for me. Serving more as an exposition device than a character (even though Mirto makes the most of it with the personal moments she is given), the play kept having a start and stop rhythm to it that also had a feeling of this play being “Undocumented Immigrants 101” by making it palatable possibly to a majority white audience.

While there is an attempt to flip the white savior trope on its head with Marisela (Blanca Isabella) confronting the reporter about whose story this is and literally stepping into the storytelling circle, the end result did not pan out as it just puts into question why the character of Marisela was not telling this story from the get-go. I also had a very hard time believing that a white reporter could tag along these women for five years and just be writing in the background.

With the “Undocumented Immigrants 101” description I mentioned earlier, this also launches my second biggest problem of the play where the story ends up being a bit too sanitized and feel-good in their attempt to discuss this rather serious issue that has now rapidly devolved in our current times. In a time where even green card holding individuals and U.S. citizens of global majority background are now being arrested and deported, I could not help but feel that this play became outdated way too fast.

This is however no fault of the play as the situation in our country has rapidly escalated literally in the past few months but I can say that though the main characters face certain perils and close calls, they all end up having a version of an happy ending even if the peripheral characters experience the more difficult fates that we never quite spend too much with to raise the stakes.

The best scene of the entire play goes to when Sari Sanchez inhabits the college bible study character Lucy and has a full-on argument with the best friends about the issues of undocumented immigration. There is an immediate sense of humanity and real-time urgency in this conversation as the playwright crafts a compelling situation where the prejudices Lucy has towards immigrants are written in a believable way that does not mock the character. This is a problem a lot of progressive stories have where the conservative characters are written as caricatures, rather than complex and problematic human beings. While I appreciate the fact drop that a Republican politician co-sponsored the DREAM act, it shies away from the more difficult truths that Democrats were also equally responsible in making the lives of immigrants that much more difficult during this time period the play is set in.

I do wish there were more scenes like the friends’ argument with Lucy as the play is more interested in quickly going through different moments of time and the broad strokes of the immigration issues, particularly when it covers the 2005 Denver police officer shooting and how it affected the main characters in the play. But the play is not interested in being weighed down by this as we end it with a wedding and the audience feeling good about watching these best friends make it through despite their obstacles.

Perhaps I’m being too harsh on a play just wanting to have a happy ending for their characters, even if the real world is far more cruel in the topic that it wishes to cover. The actors do a beautiful job in inhabiting these characters and scenic designer François-Pierre Couture, lighting designer Xinyuan Li, projection designer Hsuan–Kuang Hsieh, and costume designer Maria Catarina Copelli create a gorgeous world that is a feast to look at. Director Gomez puts all of these elements together wonderfully and while I can continue to nitpick the script, I do appreciate Zacarías for writing this play and show much needed humanity for the undocumented immigrants. While I wish the strokes could have been more specific, they are strokes that are needed especially in a time when our country’s government and many of its people refuses to even look at such attempts.

JUST LIKE US
• Written by Karen Zacarías
• Inspired by the bestselling book by Helen Thorpe
• Directed by Fidel Gomez
• Starring Newt Arlandiz, Brenda Banda, Oscar Emmanuel Fabela, Noelle Franco, Blanca Isabella, Elyse Mirto, Saul Rodriguez, Sari Sanchez, Valerie Rose Vega
• Produced by The Latino Theater Company

WHEN:
• Previews: April 10 – April 18
• Performances: April 19 – May 18
Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Sundays at 4 p.m.

WHERE:
The Los Angeles Theatre Center
514 S. Spring Street
Los Angeles CA 90013

PARKING:
• $8 with box office validation at Los Angeles Garage Associate Parking structure, 545 S. Main St., Los Angeles, CA 90013 (between 5th and 6th Streets, just behind the theater)
• Metered parking available on streets surrounding the theater.
• Take the Metro: nearest stop is Pershing Square (two blocks west of The LATC)

TICKET PRICES:
$10-$48 (except opening night)
• Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays (except opening night, April 19): $48
• Students, Seniors, Veterans and LAUSD teachers: $24 with valid ID
• All Thursday night performances and previews: $10
• Opening night (April 19): $75 (includes post-performance reception)

HOW:
latinotheaterco.org
(213) 489-0994