Monet Hurst-Mendoza’s Torera, which opened Sunday at the WP Theater, simulates the experience of binge-watching a telenovela-style saga set in the world of a Mexican bullfighting. The twisty story centers on two friends from childhood who are both drawn to the corrida: Tanok (Jared Machado) is the son of top matador Don Rafael Cárdenas (Jorge Cordova) while Elena (Jacqueline Guillén) is the daughter of Tanok’s longtime housekeeper, Pastora (Elena Hurst), and another fighter who sacrificed his own life to spare Don Rafael’s in a fateful fight years ago.
From infancy, the two have shared a household as well as a deep bond — and an almost magnetic attraction to the sport that made Don Rafael rich and famous. We meet them at age 12, where Elena pushes Tanok to be more aggressive and daring while climbing an orange tree or practicing bull-fighting with makeshift muletas, the capes used to lure the bull. She clearly has more skills than her six-months-older pal, and she soon begins to resent that her status as both a girl and the daughter of the help mean that she’s unlikely to be afforded the same opportunities to develop her talents. Elena repeatedly underscores the class divide, even noting her disadvantages compared to her idols Cristina Sánchez and Conchita Cintrón, the rare female matadors to emerge in the sport. (“Conchita Cintrón owned horses, which means she had money, which means people loved her, which means she was noticed,” Elena grouses at one point.)
The story jumps in time, as Tanok begins more formal training with his father while Elena practices in secret simultaneously holding down housekeeping jobs at a local university she herself can’t afford to attend. “You have to know your place,” her mother frequently reminds her, though she also continues to encourage her attachment to Tanok since the two “are fused at the heart.”
And indeed, Guillén and Machado have a wonderfully playful onstage rapport that captures the characters’ unusual bond — one that hints at the possibility of romance despite Elena’s multiple outbursts of immaturity and thinly veiled resentment. (Tanok’s continued devotion to Elena despite her treatment of him remains something of a mystery.) There are also hints of a similar more-than-just-professional relationship between Don Rafael and Pastora, a woman who seems to harbor no ill will toward her longtime employer despite a rather fraught history. (It’s never clear why she wasn’t able to escape service work with her marriage to Rafael’s slain ring partner Joaquín.)
Director Tatiana Pandiani’s production rushes us through the beats of the story at such an athletic pace that you may miss some of the more glaring lapses in logic and motivation. She also incorporates and choreographs two remarkable dancers, Christian Jesús Galvis and Andrea Soto, who pasa doble across the stage between scenes. They move furniture and props, establish a sensual ambience and signal flashbacks and flash-forwards by parading across the stage with a capote cape marked “the past” or “the future,” and memorably embody charging bulls as well as a horse that Tanok rides in training, climbing onto and off of Galvis’ shoulders.
Torera succeeds in celebrating aspects of Mexican culture with Emmie Finckel’s evocative set design, Yuki Nakase Link’s lighting, and especially Rodrigo Muñoz’s exquisitely embroidered costumes. Tanok and Elena’s gilded cropped jackets, known as chaquetillas, similarly elaborate tights, and bright pink stockings are truly magnificent. At one point, we even see Pastora teaching Elena how to pound raw balls of masa to prepare authentic tortillas. This is a loving portrait of Mexican society at its most traditional, misogyny and class rigidity very much reinforced. But Hurst-Mendoza overstuffs the final scenes with too much meat, too many revelations and narrative turns for the characters to absorb — or the audience to swallow. A good play, like a savvy matador, knows not to rush things before going in for the final kill. ★★★☆☆
TORERA
WP Theater, Off Broadway
Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes (with no intermission)
Tickets on sale through October 19 for $20 to $100
Culture Sauce 