Photo by Jay Towns
Fukú.
“They say it came from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death bane of the Tainos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was cracked open in the Antilles…fukú…the curse and doom of the New World.”
So begins The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Junot Díaz, a heartwarming, heartbreaking whirl of storytelling that sailed from bestseller lists into classrooms, and then onto the stage, debuting in New York in Spanish and now at Goodman’s Owen Theatre in English.
The story? Oscar de Leon, aka Oscar Wao, goes on an extraordinary journey from Jersey to his ancestral home in the Dominican Republic to root out and vanquish the fukú that casts a shadow over him and the lives of his family and fellow immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean.
Along the way, Oscar quests for love, makes friends, warms hearts, learns the story of his family, and writes it all down in a journal that will one day, Oscar hopes, be his sci-fi masterpiece.
The problem? At first glance, lovable, wonderfully sweet, nerdy Oscar, played to perfection by Lenin Izquierdo, is an unlikely hero. Unrecognized by the world, Oscar reads a lot of Lord of the Rings, watches a lot of Akira, and falls in love way too easily.
Does he have the physical attributes of a hero? Um, no.
Does he have the requisite special powers to battle a dark power? Nope.
How about the cunning intellect to outwit a supervillain? Also, no.
And he doesn’t get off to a good start. Here’s a quick rundown. Scene one: Oscar is scared to go to college and is belittled relentlessly into leaving home by his mother, Beli. Scene two: Oscar is dismissed at first by his roommate, Yunior, until his tough, strong, smart, sexy sister, Lola, arrives to provide the motivation, implicit and explicit, for Yunior to give Oscar a chance. Then Oscar meets a troubled, beautiful girl, Jenni, who he promptly crushes on, befriends, falls for, and is crushed by, all within minutes.
But you know we’ve seen this story before: Oscar may not be strong, magical, or shrewd, but he has heart. He’s naive, yes, but he’s also brave! He may not be universally loved–at least, not yet–but the people who do love him would do just about anything for him, and they do. And make no mistake, Oscar is 100% lovable.
Oscar Wao is the Dominican anime Frodo Baggins. What’s not to love?
In the second act, the real hero’s journey begins…
Photo by Jay Towns
Another quick rundown: Lenin Izquierdo is extraordinary as Oscar. He embodies the spirit of Díaz’s protagonist, again, to perfection. He exudes hopefulness and love. He 100% throws himself into the wide-eyed dreamer archetype in a performance that will not soon be forgotten.
Kelvin Grullon is fantastic as the tough, fun, sweet, smart, and sneakily insightful Yunior. In a high-energy play, Grullon supplies more than his share of comic relief, not to mention tender moments. Julissa Calderon matches Grullon and brings her own fiery, fierce energy as Oscar’s sister, Lola. We all need a sister like Lola. Jalbelly Guzmán is more than a little bewitching as Jenni, and then later as Ybon, Oscar’s tragic love interests. It can’t be easy to play utterly broken and irresistible, but she does it brilliantly. And Yohanna Florentino is heartbreaking in her role as Beli. Florentino conveys the day-in-day-out strength and ferocity Beli needs for her own fight with the fukú, while also making it painfully clear that she loves her kids, even as she tears them down.
The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a whole lotta love letters, all at once. First and foremost, Marco Antonio Rodriguez’s adaptation from the page to the stage is a love letter to Díaz’s novel. With a running time of almost three hours, you can feel Rodriguez working to preserve as much of the novel as he can, though there may need to be a few cuts on the way to Broadway. Although his version smooths some of the rough edges from the novel and cleans out a bit of the grit, there’s plenty of depth and struggle. Rodriguez stretches the confines of the traditional theater experience, testing the limits of stage time and space in his own quest to capture the essence of Oscar’s story.
To this end, Rodriguez, director Wendy Mateo, and set designer Regina Garcia construct a vibrant, colorful, comic-book world of Wao onstage. Rodriguez and Mateo capture Díaz’s melody and rhythm, presenting a series of moments like photographs in an album, tracing a boy’s journey through his family history. Mateo’s direction and inventive use of space mirror the play’s polyphonic, prose-poetic dialogue and its shifting tone, racing with adrenaline one moment and turning thoughtful and reflective the next. Garcia’s set design, rooted in pop culture, moves fluidly from anime and The Legend of Zelda-style fantasy to a Jersey arcade in one scene and the lush landscapes of the Dominican Republic in the next.
For Junot Díaz, “memory is magic,” and Oscar is on a journey to rid himself, his family, and his people of the fukú, the dread that casts a shadow over their lives and troubles their memories.
The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is an immigrant story, a history, and a love letter that captures the complexity, the hope, and the pain of the immigrant experience without sugarcoating or romanticizing the struggle.
Fukú is dread. Fukú is generational trauma. Fukú is the Eye of Sauron. And maybe this is all insurmountable.
But Oscar Wao is hope. Oscar Wao is kindness. Oscar Wao is the sweet sense that we can do better, the beautiful idea that the world can be a good place. All we need to do is decide to make it that way.
The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao runs through April 12 at Goodman’s Owen Theatre, 170 North Dearborn Street, Chicago, Illinois 60601. You can get tickets here. For more Chicago reviews or show information, see chicagoonstage.com or theatreinchicago.com.