Theatre in Review: Guac (Public Theater)

	Manuel Oliver. Photo: Peter Johnston

The title of this piece -- which runs only through this week so, for God's sake, hurry -- is also the nickname of Manuel Oliver's son Joaquin, who, on Valentine's Day 2018, was shot four times with an AR-15 rifle while attending Marjory Stoneman Douglas Stoneman High School. It is a grim premise, to be sure, but, as told by Oliver and his co-writer James Clements, it is filled with laughter and life, alternately heartbreaking and enraging. It is a report from an open wound and its message couldn't be more urgent.

That Oliver can take the stage to recount this unthinkable event must cost untold amounts of psychic energy; that he does it so engagingly makes it a staggering accomplishment. Not a professional actor, he is a magnetic stage presence, possessed of natural warmth and wit yet uncannily prepared to stare down the awful truth. Part of the Public's Politics of Now Series, short-running pieces that directly address key issues of the day, Guac reframes one of American society's most intractable problems in brutally human terms: Next to the torn flesh of young bodies, sophistic defenses of the Second Amendment and politician's mumbled thoughts and prayers crumble into dust.

Guac basically breaks down into three sections, the first depicting life with Oliver; his wife Patricia; daughter Andrea; and the family dog. Each is introduced as a figure on a paper canvas; when Oliver reveals the last portrait -- of Joaquin -- the Anspacher Theater is deadly silent, knowing what's coming. But first, there's happiness: Immigrants from Venezuela who became American citizens on -- wait for it -- the day of Donald Trump's inauguration, the Olivers thrived in their new home. Oliver is wickedly amusing about their choice of Parkland, Florida -- "a city with a lot of white people from Florida. And there are fake lakes. Fake trees. Maybe even fake birds, I don't know" -- but he is also clear that the family's days were filled with laughter. By way of illustration, he tells a story about his son, who, age seven, accidentally went to school in one of his sister's outfits. "He came back home, and I look at him and go, 'Dude, you're wearing your sister's pants.' And he looked, and he started laughing. He was happy. In our house, everything was about having fun. With each other. Not at each other. With each other."

The fun is replaced by unbearable suspense when Joaquin goes to school on that fated day, bearing flowers for his girlfriend. When the news gets out about a shooting situation, Oliver and Patricia desperately try to reach him. His friends insist he was in another part of the building, away from the killing, but their next step, a tour of the local emergency rooms, proves fruitless. They end up in the "encounter center" where other young people are reunited with their parents. "We see families coming back together. It's like watching the rebirth of the family," Oliver says. In the piece's most devastating passage, he says, "Hope evolves. I started hoping he just dropped his phone. Then I hoped he was injured, just not badly. Finally, I hoped it was fast and painless."

Oliver freely admits to enduring depression and suicidal ideations following Joquin's murder but, fired by memories of Joaquin's political activism, he takes up the cause, starting an organization, Change the Ref, to push for stricter gun laws. This leads to some hilarious passages detailing his determination to be heard, including his attempts at storming the Biden White House by climbing a nearby construction crane to unfurl an image of Joaquin, and, later, being ejected from a bill-signing ceremony for heckling the President.

Their lives transformed by Joaquin's death, Oliver and Patricia become full-time advocates, traveling the country to fight for better gun laws. In doing so, he acknowledges that they are confronting ideas deeply embedded in American culture: "They made a brand out of the Second Amendment, and it's related to loyalty. Patriotism. American flag." He adds, in a cold fury, "Your kids train how to survive from a shooter in their schools. There's math and then how to survive a shooter in your school. There's a safe corner inside the classrooms. So, if you're a kid, you better get in that corner. You have to be quiet. Shhhh. No crying." And, he adds in astonishment, there's a movement afoot to arm teachers; what could possibly go wrong?

In many ways, Guac is the story of a purposeful life savagely wrenched from the ashes of tragedy, and one can only admire Oliver's determination to fight for a better world. But he offers no easy inspiration. As he sadly notes, the pain never goes away: "You miss the guy he'll never be: the eighteen-year-old, nineteen, twenty-one the legal beer we were going to drink together. Twenty-five. Going to college, or not. Twenty-seven. Getting married, or not. Thirty. Having kids, or not. I'll never meet that person."

Aside from an awkward interlude in which audience members are given time to call home and tell their spouses/partners/children/whatever they love them, Guac (a co-production with Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and Change the Ref) is faultlessly paced under the direction of Michael Cotey. It also offers solid lighting and sound by Justine Burke and Grover Hollway, respectively. But Oliver's astounding bravery carries this production; next to Guac, practically everything else in town feels like the frailest bit of froth. --David Barbour