Theatre in Review: Miss You Like Hell (The Public Theater)

	Gizel Jiménez, Daphne Rubin-Vega. Photo: Joan Marcus

The unambiguous reason to see this new musical at the Public is Gizel Jimenez. As Olivia, a bookish, lone-wolf adolescent who pours out every detail of her angry heart in a blog, earning a loyal fan base, she is more than capable of carrying the show in tandem with the always-welcome Daphne Rubin-Vega. Jimenez's face is a kind of emotional weather map, going from sunny to stormy without warning. She also has a lethal way with a line. Explaining the plot of Prometheus Bound to her wayward mother, Beatriz (Rubin-Vega), she says, "An eagle lands on Prometheus, rips out his liver. The wound heals overnight. Next day, the eagle returns, chews him open. Over and over." Shooting Beatriz a look, she adds, "I feel like the eagle just returned," and instantly, one sees that this is one sixteen-year-old who is not to be trifled with. When she lets her powerful voice go, during the title number, one forgets about everything else, including the subways that rumble beneath the Newman Theater. She is a real find, and she casts stardust over everything in Miss You Like Hell.

And the show can use all the stardust anyone can muster. A right-thinking attempt at grappling with the ongoing disaster that is the US immigration policy, it has at its heart a situation that should have left the auditorium sodden with audience tears. That this doesn't happen is, I think, due to the fact that the creators of Miss You Like Hell are so busy crafting its theme that they've forgotten to bring the characters fully to life.

Olivia lives in Philadelphia with her father, who, years earlier, broke up with Beatriz. For a while, Beatriz had weekend visitation rights, but the meetings proved to be too wrenching for mother and daughter, and, eventually, Beatriz fled to San Francisco. When she reads a post on Olivia's blog about a possible suicide attempt, she hits the road, drives cross-country, and begs her daughter to return to California with her. This way, she thinks, she'll have a week to supply a little maternal affection and, perhaps, get to the root of Olivia's agony. Although she is all but being abducted, Olivia decides to go along for the ride.

Olivia lives with her father because Beatriz is an undocumented immigrant, and, as the show begins, her deportation case is working its way through the courts in San Francisco. As an illegal who never married Olivia's father, she has few, if any, rights -- a fact that doesn't keep the furious Olivia from feeling abandoned. Among other things, she openly resents Beatriz's attempts at restyling her. ("The comb is your friend," she notes, staring at the haystack of hair on her daughter's head.) Gazing at the pink skirt her mother has bought for her, Olivia cracks, "How many plastic flamingos were killed for this?" Learning that Olivia has told her readers that her mother is dead, Beatriz says, "I like how you killed me. Aneurysm seems like a painless way to go." When Beatriz brags about the many languages she speaks, Oiivia interjects, "How about 'mother'? Are you fluent in that language?" Clearly, they will need every mile of their trip if they are to find some sort of common ground.

But, as the two of them gradually draw together, finding a bond that, however buried, still very much exists, Miss You Like Hell never delivers the promised emotional payoff, largely because the characters are so thinly sketched. Beatriz is, or was, an artist, but we haven't any idea of the life she has lived -- how she gets by, who her friends and lovers are, if she has any family connections, or if she retains any artistic ambitions. Especially left blank is her relationship with Olivia's father, about whom we learn exactly nothing, not even his name, although it appears that he is a remarkably neglectful parent. We get some sense of Olivia's life -- her compulsive blogging, her love of literature -- but since her life in Philadelphia isn't described, she, too, comes off as an idea of a character rather than the real thing. These two-dimensional figures of suffering seem designed to be moved around according to the will of their creators.

There are telling bits of business that demonstrate the low-grade anxiety that is surely the undertone of any illegal immigrant's life. A scene in which Beatriz is stopped by a cop -- she has a broken taillight -- is an exercise in low-grade terror: The car is "hers," but it is registered in the name of a friend with citizenship, a situation that she cannot explain when grilled. An encounter with a court clerk in South Dakota, where Beatriz is trying to get a decades-old, and minor, possession-of-marijuana charge scrubbed from her record -- which could help her chances in San Francisco -- is a vivid illustration of governmental indifference.

But instead of using the road-trip format to reveal more about Olivia and Beatriz, the book's author, Quiara Alegria Hudes, adopts a picaresque approach, populating the play with characters who arrive, steal focus, and then drop out of the story. These include Mo and Higgins (Michael Mulheren and David Patrick Kelly), a pair of elderly gay bikers whose retirement is devoted to getting married in every state; Manuel (Danny Bolero), a widow tamale salesman who falls for Beatriz; and Pearl (Latoya Edwards) a fan of Olivia's blog, who volunteers at Yellowstone Park. Pearl's big number, "Yellowstone," is most attractive -- the score features music by Erin McKeown that fuses cool jazz with indie folk sounds and often-witty lyrics by McKeown and Hudes -- but it doesn't tell you much of anything about her and it steals valuable time from Beatriz and Olivia.

The cast is both genial and accomplished, and the director, Lear deBessonet, manages one stunning effect, when the stage is bisected by a border wall; this cues the devastating final scene, in which US residents try to communicate through the wall with loved ones on the other side. The production design features Riccardo Hernandez's set, the color of deep-blue sky, with the audience on three sides; lighting by Tyler Micoleau that finds distinct looks for various emotional states; well-observed costumes by Emilio Sosa (check out the outfits -- so very different from their basic looks -- that Beatriz and Olivia choose for a court appearance); and sound by Jessica Paz that maintains a pleasing transparency throughout.

The fact remains, however, that this show, which should have been both a tearjerker and a call to arms, squanders its opportunity. Like-minded theatregoers -- that is, to say, ninety-nine percent of the Public's audience -- are likely to cheer it on, but I left the theatre wanting to know so much more about these characters. Instead of feeling deeply for Beatriz and Olivia, I was thinking about Rubin-Vega and Jiménez and how I hoped their next vehicle would be better. -- David Barbour