REVIEW: Culture Clash targets Orange County in latest comedy

By PAM KRAGEN - Staff Writer | Wednesday, March 26, 2008 9:55 AM PDT ∞

It's been 10 years since the Chicano theater trio known as Culture Clash had its way with San Diego in the hilarious comedy "Culture Clash at Bordertown" at San Diego Repertory Theatre.

Now Orange County is the target in the latest installment of Culture Clash's ever-traveling show, "Culture Clash in AmeriCCA," which plays through April 6 at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa.

"AmeriCCA" is a collection of the best bits drawn from the trio's site-specific plays in San Diego, Miami ("Radio Mambo"), New York ("Nuyorican Stories"), Washington, D.C. ("The District") and San Francisco ("The Mission"), mixed with a few new skits that skewer Orange County. (The plays, written over the past 15 years, are drawn from hundreds of interviews the trio conduct with local residents in each city.)

Formed in 1984 in San Francisco, Culture Clash consists of Herbert Siguenza, Richard Montoya and Ric Salinas, a 40something, L.A.-based theatrical trio whose plays look at American culture through Chicano eyes.

Adept at playing everything from Mexican day laborers and P.B. surfers to Cuban housewives and Berkeley lesbians, the men of Culture Clash are comedians, mimics, dancers, satirists and writers alike. SCR Artistic Director David Emmes directs the fast-paced, minimalist production, with the only scenery a large, faded American flag backdrop and a few folding chairs, punctuated with lively salsa music designed by BC Keller.

If you've seen a Culture Clash show, though, you probably know that their plays can be hit and miss, with hilarious skits sandwiching the occasional dud. But with so much material to cherry-pick from in its past shows, "AmeriCCA" mostly avoids that pitfall with a generally strong one hour, 45-minute program.

As always, the comic scenes are better than the dramatic ones, and some of the farther-afield region-specific humor is lost on South Coast Rep audiences. But the Orange County zingers written for this staging of "AmeriCCA" are warmly received and references to local landmarks, neighborhoods, schools and newsmakers drew big laughs from the crowd.

One of the best new bits opens the show. Siguenza and Salinas play themselves interviewing Manuel (played by Montoya), a Mexican day laborer looking for work in an Anaheim-area Home Depot parking lot. His gentle but pointed observations on the love-hate relationship Southern Californians have with illegal immigrants humorously hits home.

Also good is a new bit where Montoya plays a Vietnamese-American teen punk, hanging with his fellow Asian Car Crew members at a Westminster 7-Eleven, where they polish their Accords, Acuras and Preludes and pretend to be black.

Indicted former Orange County Sheriff Mike Corona makes a brief appearance, trading favors by phone while shopping at South Coast Plaza. An Orange County swingers club gets a nod. And there are several jokes about Trinity Broadcasting Network and the Crystal Cathedral. While these are all well and good, the trio doesn't dig nearly deep enough into the class divides and political conservatism of the area.

As a result, the show's best moments are old chestnuts that are still very funny and well-performed. Some will be familiar to San Diego audiences who've seen the troupe perform their site-specific work there on several occasions.

One of the best is Salinas' solo bit from "Nuyorican Stories," where he demonstrates (with dead-on precision) the differences between New York's Latino immigrant populations by the way they dance to salsa music. Another terrific scene, from "Radio Mambo," involves Montoya interviewing Siguenza and Salina, who play the mixed-race married couple Todd and Francis, whose Miami demolition firm has grown fat off the devastation of Hurricane Andrew. Their easy intimacy and the way their words tumble over each other in comfortable conversation is a well-honed and well-timed jewel.

Siguenza's solo scene as Adelita, a pre-op transsexual sex therapist from San Francisco's Mission district, is bold and hilarious. And Montoya and Salinas' duet as a pair of burned-out Bay area hippie lesbians is warm and politically pointed.

San Diego-centric scenes include Jennifer and Tilly (Siguenza and Salinas) as a Carmel Mountain Ranch lesbian couple (who call themselves "vagi-tarians") struggling to fit into the uptight conservative neighorbood, and a cross-border bit with an angry expatriate Vietnam vet living in Tijuana juxtaposed with two immigrant San Diegans (from Uganda and the Philippines) embracing their new country.

A couple of scenes feel dated, others only mildly amuse and some feel flat, but when "AmeriCCA" works, it works well, and that's thanks to the combined writing and comedic talents of the men who make up Culture Clash.

"Culture Clash in AmeriCCA"

When: 7:45 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays; 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays; through April 6

Where: South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

Tickets: $28-$62

Info: (714) 7085555

Web: www.scr.org

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