SOMEWHERE
Genre: Family Drama, Coming of Age
Time: 1959–60 (late 1950s to early 1960s), Summer
Place: New York City
Cast Size: 5 (majority Latin cast)
Similar Shows: The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
Reviewer: Larissa Guerrini-Maraldi
Log Line: A gifted, theatrical Puerto Rican family is faced with the threat of a neighbourhood wide eviction that could prevent them from achieving their dreams in show business.
The Story
This is a story worth telling.
Rating: ★★☆ (2 – Agree). Though I do have one or two questions in relation to how the story is told or resolves.
The characters feel authentic to their backgrounds and given circumstances.
Rating: ★★★ (3 – Strongly Agree). Maybe a bit more could have been added to Jamie but it works as it is. The stage directions suggest an immersive experience for the audience, with the initial scene setting giving a sense of the struggle (the cramped nature of the space) but also the literal and figurative warmth present in the household. It also leads to a greater contrast to the scene setting in Act 2 in which the more derelict neighbourhood is shown and the family is literally and mentally in a less secure place.
The protagonist’s main goal and conflict (antagonistic force) are clear.
Rating: ★★★–★★ (Between Strongly Agree and Agree). It’s clear what Alejandro’s want vs need is, with his coming of age arc being one of coming out of one’s self-imposed prison—to reject passivity and assimilation, to dismantle the belief in your assigned, learned role or place, and not be afraid to dream or imagine. The antagonistic force is the gentrification of their neighbourhood in the first act, though it feels more like the absent father in the second, which feels a bit less interesting.
The themes of this piece are relevant and resonant in today’s world.
Rating: ★★★ (3 – Strongly Agree). Themes of family and community, gentrification, class and poverty, the immigrant experience, and the question of why and how we dream—what happens to dreams deferred.
Dialogue reflects the characters’ language and intentions.
Rating: ★★☆ (2 – Agree). The frequent use of nicknames and Spanish sentences creates a sense of familial warmth and authenticity. However, there could possibly be more subtext present than there is currently—maybe a bit of repetition in stating the same desires.
Production
The materials submitted are well-organized, complete, and free of spelling or proofreading errors.
Rating: ★★★ (3 – Strongly Agree). There is a spell check needed on page 36 (add ‘d’ to ‘an’) and possibly add OFF direction to Francisco’s voice on page 90.
After reviewing the material, I see that this piece is in keeping with the vision of P3.
Rating: ★★★–★★ (Between Strongly Agree and Agree)
Comments:
Overall, in relation to seeing Somewhere as a viable commercial production, there is much that can and could be appreciated by a general and theatre-kid-esque audience. Arguably the main initial draw would be the romantic historical attention paid to West Side Story in its Broadway and cinematic production. The discussion of Chita Rivera and later Rita Moreno are likely to create a lot of wistfulness, and even humorous reminiscence. With the showtunes on the record player or sung by the characters, the ballet and soft shoe dance sequences, and impressive choreography especially at the end, the play carries a strong sense of nostalgia and can act as a love letter to Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, and Broadway.
There is a thrill and pleasure imbued in the portrayal of Puerto Rican culture and music which also adds a layer of specificity that helps this narrative to stand out. The characters should be relatable to audience members for the most part, thanks to the universality of their dreams. I also appreciated the shared humour, little quirks and moments of banter within the family, which helped to make the story never feel too self-serious or dull and to strengthen the care for the characters. And the themes of gentrification tied to the immigrant experience and class poverty, with the added learning of the complicated history behind the establishment of the Lincoln Center, are important matters to be represented and discussed. There is also the question of whether this production would be accessible and affordable to the people whom it portrays, in which I hope the latter will be true. There’s even an explicit line in the play regarding how Inez and her family have to sneak into the Broadway plays as ushers in order to be able to see them, so it’s important to be self-aware in that regard .
Another feature of this play that would likely entice the theatre fan in the audience would be the similarities of Somewhere to Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie. Inez is very much the determined but delusional matriarch like Amanda, in the way she lives in her dreams. She will find or use any comforting distraction, in the form of theatre or music, to keep her away from the truth of her family’s living situation. Alejandro meanwhile resembles the character of Tom in his role as narrator and crushed patriarch. He takes on manual labour and sacrifices for the sake of his family in the absence of their father. Rebecca’s oversensitivity echoes that of Laura, and Jamie is the “gentleman caller” who possesses a mobility the others lack through his position as Jerome Robbins’ assistant. Furthermore I find that he purposefully acts as the medium between the two conflicting notions of dreaming and reality that play contends with. Francisco does not possess a direct counterpart, acting as an extra sibling who desires to be the next Marlon Brando, and there to create quite a bit of the play’s humour.
And speaking of the characters themselves, I found that some arcs could be better foreshadowed or strengthened, otherwise while the characters can and could be relatable to an audience, they can easily feel like archetypes, and their motivations can be difficult to understand at times. Francisco and Rebecca are quite similar in their fantastical dreaming (their sequences on pages 24 and 96), and in their belief that they have what it takes to become stars and will do. There may be one or two more fantasy sequences than needed, with Francisco and Rebecca’s not revealing much that we didn’t already know. I noted as well how they two as characters tend to have the most overlapping dialogue (lines occurring simultaneously), as if they were one entity rather than separate individuals. Rebecca especially was mainly in the background, and we needed to see more of her struggle.
The text does not really provide much insight into Alejandro’s inner struggles, and without that proper understanding it can and could lead to him feeling like too much of a buzzkill for the audience. Outside of the opening scene, he only has one moment of directly addressing the audience as the narrator of the story. While this can imply him as ultimately the main character of this narrative, and it is that the story aims to give him an arc regarding maturity and building inner strength against the forces of assimilation, unlike in The Glass Menagerie, the Candelaria family are allowed to run around and take up space so much that Alejandro has to practically step forward to say or insert his ponderous questions, stating rather than showing him to be and change as the protagonist.
To me the feel good nature of a story must come from its sincerity, mixed with an element of groundedness. It's clear that this narrative derives from a place of personal meaning, with Lopez’s own family being inspirations: his aunt Priscilla Lopez best known as Morales in A Chorus Line on Broadway, and his own father being a 12 year old extra on the filming of West Side Story. These elements would be good to include or feature in a playbill or program if the average audience member is not aware of it beforehand. To make the feel good element feel all the more richer and powerful, there needs to be a more visible sense of the struggle to make it and survive which I’m not completely getting right now. The James Baldwin quote included in the epigraph made me think we might see a bit more of the ‘teeth of the world that are sharp’. Part of this can come from the main action of the play being mainly contained to the family apartment space, meaning we do not see as much of the harsh reality portrayed as much as we see it described by the characters. Especially in the case of Alejandro, who we are meant to sympathise with and understand why he resists his family’s fanciful dreaming, but without a direct image of his life in his dead end profession, it’s not as potent. Because of the energy and hopefulness that the majority of the characters possess to a too naively constant degree, their problems can potentially ring false, especially when they seem naturally talented, and while they are said to practice a lot, we do not see it or much of the progression.
The play itself is promising, exuberant, even charming, but flawed and at times indulgent, possibly a bit overstuffed. There is a fair amount of melodrama, and the play’s conclusion involving the absent father is obvious before it is made explicit. Following a thrilling Act 1 conclusion, the ending of Act 2 and to the play overall feels anticlimactic and a bit puzzling, lacking the dramatic payoff from before. Most notably, Alejandro is never truly given consequences for his letter writing plan that affected his family but especially emotionally manipulates his mother. There is the context of her stubbornness in not leaving the house and the risk of her losing her life to the demolition as a result, but the persistence of this lie beyond that time and space requires serious consequence. As a small sidenote, the lying about letters for the sake of a family’s feelings and feeding their ideal fantasy of another family member feels very Dear Evan Hansen-like of Alejandro and the story. This would probably rub audience members, particularly gen Z individuals, the wrong way.
Moreover, Jamie upon finding out insists that Alejandro has to be the one to break it to his family, but he never has to because Inez finds the letters herself, and after her dreams being realised in the form of her children getting to be in a major musical, and seeing Alejandro crying and upset, she partially lies to Francisco and Rebecca about their father’s absence from California, and tells him to go chase his dreams. Alejandro is thus robbed of a key moment of agency to do the painful but correct thing. I think this reveal of the letters being fabricated by him could actually have been shown to the audience, but not the characters, at the end of Act 1, as it is an important detail and plot point that only comes to light in the final ten or so pages. There is also a real lack of confrontation from Alejandro to Inez regarding her lie of spending all of their saved money willfully for the Jerome Robbins dinner. This could make her likely appear hypocritical to the audience for her anger and violence toward him. In order for the final dance number to hit even more, there needs to be less of a complete siding with follow your dreams, embodied by Inez, who appears to be placed in the right despite her recklessness, over acknowledging and facing reality like Alejandro has done. There needs to be a thematic balance or compromise, rather than an either/or, which I think is best embodied by the likes of the record player; as a device it effectively symbolises both the communal joy and dangerous distraction that comes through surrendering one’s self to dreaming. And its gentrified counterpart, the radio, acts as an important reminder of the fragile preciousness of family history and in turn the dreams a family carries and preserves.
All this to say is while I can recommend the play based on the commercial appeals stated prior, it would need some significant revision, focusing and trimming in order for it to have the full emotional impact that the audience deserves to experience. This in turn will help them learn about a key part of Broadway and New York history, where the personal is a powerful reflection of the macro.
