“Camila Ponte Alvarez as Lucia and Caspar Hardaker as Abel inhabit their roles so completely and in Alvarez’s case, so fiercely, that the audience is completely drawn into their encounters.“
Kate Stratford
4 bottles of Dos Equis
Riverside
Playing to 5th August
Off the back of a brilliant first novel debut, Lucia takes a job as a scriptwriter on a telenovela style production in Los Angeles. For the production company, she is the diversity inclusion and she is desperate to succeed. She is also very isolated and lonely. Enter Abel (literally) a cleaner in her building. First tenuous encounters develop into a relationship of shared stories and amelioration of loneliness, for Abel too is Mexican in a world dominated by white male culture and equally isolated. But ultimately, this bond of shared trauma cannot survive when faced with the lure of success in the white world.
Fade is Tanya Saracho’s examination of marginalisation, sexism, prejudice and bias which exists inside a dominant culture. The two performances are excellent – Camila Ponte Alvarez as Lucia and Caspar Hardaker as Abel inhabit their roles so completely and in Alvarez’s case, so fiercely, that the audience is completely drawn into their encounters. Hardaker’s Abel elicits sympathy for the internalised suffering. Abel pragmatically has decided to just keep his head down and work; to do “whatever it takes”, advice he passes to the raging Lucia. Who uses it to betray him.
Lucia’s journey from “Latino” to “Gringo” is well documented by the costuming (Rita Naidu). As the play progresses, Lucia’s clothing and hair (and décor) become less flamboyant; less evident of her culture and more aspirational conformist. Even her energy and behaviour tone down, until the end she is more “Gringo” than “Latino”. She has betrayed herself as much she has Abel in chasing the white god of success.
Design allows the actors a good space to play in. Melanie Liertz’ set is the paradoxical grey world of the creative office and the fluorescent world of the cleaner’s store. Jasmine Rizk’s lighting and Daniel Herten’s audio and video offer just the right level of production support. And the direction by Jeneffa Soldatic is solid. The moments where the play loses traction have nothing to do with performance or production elements but happens in places where the script is a little overwritten. Not enough trust has been placed in the audience’s ability to fill in the gaps themselves; in their preparedness to get onboard. A little judicious editing would help the pace and the resolution. We know the point where Lucia decides to betray Abel. The rest, as they say, is a given.
Any culture which seeks to dominate, to bully and demand compliance, deserves to be challenged. To be dissected and exposed. The National Theatre of Parramatta’s programme to support such work is to be lauded and supported.
Kate Stratford, Theatre Now
