Theatre in Review: Empanada Loca (Labyrinth Theater Company/Bank Street Theater)It's the season for ghoulish fun, and if you're looking for a bedtime story guaranteed to keep you up, shuddering, far into the night, Empanada Loca is the show for you. Aaron Mark's one-person drama is, according to the script, "inspired by the legend of Sweeney Todd," and it more than delivers on the famed story's grisly premise, adding some bizarre inventions of its own. There's a fifty-fifty chance that you'll leave the Bank Street Theater seriously contemplating turning vegan, at least until the memory of this unappetizing tale dies down. Empanada Loca is narrated by Dolores, an ex-con, who recounts how she started out as a Hunter College coed and ended up, two decades later, holed up in an abandoned subway tunnel. As a college student, Dolores gets involved with Dominic, who runs a lucrative drug-dealing business on 156th Street. Dolores' mother, a cop, would surely not approve, but she is dead, as is her father, a doorman. Also, sex with Dominic is unlike anything Dolores has known; soon, she has dropped out of college and is living with him in his well-appointed uptown apartment. All is bliss for five years until Dolores is caught in a drug sting and is sent to Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women. Unable to contact Dominic -- and apparently abandoned by him -- she spends years wondering if they have a future together. Released 13 years later, she returns to the old neighborhood to find it changed almost beyond recognition by the forces of gentrification. There's an especially telling episode in which Dolores talks her way into her former apartment, hoping to find the thousands of dollars that she and Dominic stored behind a bathroom wall. Of course, it isn't there, and none of the few remaining dealers on the street know anything about him. The only remaining vestige of the past is the local empanada joint, which has fallen on evil days, thanks to the neighborhood's demographic changes. The owner is dead, but Luis, his son, carries on, and surprisingly, he is more than happy to help Dolores out, even offering her a place to stay. Dolores picked up massage skills from one of the inmates, and, with Luis' assistance, starts to make a decent living. However, Luis owes thousands of dollars in back rent, and his new landlord, Jonah, is getting ready to evict him. Dolores breaks up an argument between the two men, and, in an attempt to win over Jonah, she offers him a massage -- and during the session, impulsively breaks his neck. I won't say much more, except to note that soon there is a new type of empanada on the menu and the place is doing gangbuster business. I will also add that more than one person appears with the power to make Dolores' life uncomfortable, allowing her and Luis to keep the supply chain humming. Mark spins his tale in masterly fashion; his ear for dialogue is just about faultless and he populates his tale with such sharply etched characters as Nellie, the 16-year-old pre-op transsexual, who may or may not be having a fling with Jonah; Marcie, the vengeful drug dealer who wants Dolores out of the way; and the wasted-looking homeless man who always seems to be around, watching the comings and goings at the empanada shop. Luis is in a class by himself, given the way he enthusiastically embraces his and Dolores' new business plan, not to mention his highly specific sexual tastes. Also impressive is the author's way with the ghastly details of how the meat for the new empanadas is sourced. And even when you think you know where the story is going, he has some impressive curveballs at hand; if he does borrow his second-biggest twist from the musical Sweeney Todd, he also cooks up a stunner of a finale, involving the identity of Dolores' auditor, which called up a flurry of groans and shocked laughter from the audience at my performance. Still, Empanada Loca wouldn't work without the right actress to guide us through every step of Dolores' descent into hell, and, fortunately, under the author's direction, Daphne Rubin-Vega is the lady for the job. With her slow-burning intensity and fierce confrontation, she rivets our attention from the instant she appears on David Meyer's clammy tunnel set, under Bradley King's tightly controlled lighting, which plausibly creates the illusion that the only available illumination is coming from four lightbulbs. The actress has a way of taking us into her confidence, even when divulging the most horrifying details of her story, that is invaluable here. Even more remarkable is her ability to maintain a single note of intensity for 95 minutes without exhausting either herself or us. It's a bravura performance, easily the most significant thing she has done since her breakthrough in Rent, twenty years ago. The scenery and lighting make strong contributions, as does Ryan Rumery's sound design, which evokes the rumble of passing subways. But everything is subordinate to Daphne Rubin-Vega as she spins her web of evil for the appalled, yet fascinated, audience. You can call this one American Horror Story: Dolores. -- David Barbour 
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