¡El Conquistador!

NYTW is very much my favorite theatre in NYC - more and more I love it. I always usher for shows there and the house manager is just great. This show in particular is the free-brownie show, and who doesn't love ushering for a show and then getting a brownie for free? The red velvet chairs in the theatre and the space itself just make me very happy. And their first show of the season - ¡El Conquistador! - is an entirely new concept for theatre that I've yet to see on any stage.

It's described as a simultaneous foreign film, theatre play, epic history and Telenovela (a Latin American soap opera/mini-series). The show was created on-location in Colombia, and the lead actor + director both hail originally from Colombian. The audience is greeted on stage by the lead actor - Thaddeus Phillips - who delivers an "informal prologue" telling us about telenovelas and a few other things that will be important to the story (e.g. Pony Malta drinks and specifics to the job of a doorman in Colombian cities). Most importantly (at least now looking back), he warns the audience that this story has the frivolity of classic work - such as Shakespeare - and to remember the classics when the level of frivolity gets pretty high within the story.

So, Thaddeus Phillips plays Polonio, a peasant from a rural village who decides to leave his town and chase his dream of becoming a soap opera star. He ends up in Bogota, Colombia's capital, and takes a job as a doorman. Now doormen have it pretty tough in Colombia, especially in Polonio's building. They are the only people with keys to the front door - not even the residents have keys - and they are pretty much called on by all residents at all times to bring up Diet Cokes, cigarettes, let their cars in and out of the garage, etc, etc. Poor Polonio has to cover his doorman station all alone. Just when he tries to catch up on his favorite telenovela - he can't get reception or he is constantly interrupted by any number of tenants. We are taken through his daily routine and relationship with his tenants purely through video form. All tenants have been captured on film in Colombia and Polonio is the only actor on the stage. Some pretty crazy things go on - and it gets very silly towards the end. So silly that a package is sent to the front desk, only to turn out to be Christopher Columbus' journal. The elevator opens and Polonio seems to see the ocean on the inside. It's discovered that he has this package - and one of the tenants also thinks that his girlfriend has been cheating on him with Polonio. He hires a hit man to take out Polonio. The hit man shows up as a Pony Malta delivery man - shoots Polonio (who has put a metal plate in his chest) and then turns out to be Polonio's twin brother...and so on and so forth - with much more silliness.

So my qualms with the show - I saw it in its fourth preview and it is a VERY technical show. The video elements and subtitles (did I mention the show is performed in Spanish) as well as Polonio's moving of the set piece to match the video have to be timed EXACTLY to work - and the show just wasn't there yet. It's a tough show to do with only one actor - Thaddeus really works hard and he did a good job - but it just wasn't polished. I think it could be on its way.

Overall - I LOVED the idea of the show, but thought it lacked a bit in execution. The set was under-utilized and one or more staff could have helped Polonio greatly on stage by moving things away, taking away less of the audience's focus every time a scene changed. Regardless, I applaud the creators for their effort and for NYTW for bringing this type of show to the NYC stage.