What the Firehouse Theatre Company is doing to keep murdered Colorado Free University founder John Hand’s memory alive is heartwarming. Firehouse has grown into a legit community theater that attracts top-notch area actors. The space bearing his name has been renovated into one of the most comfortable in town. But its leaders must become more discerning about the titles they choose.
The best that can be said about “Unmerciful Good Fortune” is that surely writer Edwin Sanchez meant well. But his dour and bloated play is more than just philosophically misguided – it is morally, religiously and legally irresponsible.
One must understand here that a critic’s observations about a work and the performance of it are separate animals. My objections are not to director Michael R. Duran’s earnest and talented ensemble, who also clearly mean well. The strong performances by Laura Chavez, Sherry Coca-Candelaria and especially emerging new talent Jackie Billotte are at times heartbreaking.
But “Unmerciful Good Fortune,” widely panned since its 1996 premiere in Chicago, is an overwrought mess of structure and substance.
Like nearly every work written since 1990, this is a play that wants desperately to be a film. But screenwriters with no money keep foisting their screenplays onto America’s stages as if they are interchangeable. They are not. In a clear repudiation of Tennessee Williams’ style, today’s playwrights will end any scene the moment they come across a decent line. The result is choppy, truncated storytelling with lots of blackouts.
Fatima (Billotte) is a street gangster turned waitress who knows all about a person by taking their hand – their past, future and present shames (“you will be bald at 57!”). She has poisoned 12 diners, ostensibly because they “told her” they wanted to die. They were homeless, unhappy or diseased, so we are supposed to find saintly heroism in her actions – though it’s never explained why an 8-year-
old having a bratty day deserved to have her pancakes laced. Or why anyone, even armed with that knowledge, is justified in taking their fates into her hands without remorse.
Fatima is particularly drawn to Maritza (Chavez), the lowly assistant district attorney charged with convicting her. With one touch, Fatima knows her Catholic mother Luz (Coca-
Candelaria) is dying, suffering like so many of Fatima’s diners.
Sanchez has no idea which of these three women he ultimately wants his play to be about, and he would have stood a better chance if he had limited his story to these three. Instead there are also three well-played but superfluous male characters dragging the story out.
In the complete absence of defense representation, everyone from the brusque district attorney (Verl Hite) to Maritza is drawn to Fatima. Now if, post-
conviction, a prosecutor wanted to visit a death-row inmate every day, that would be no more implausible than Truman Capote’s infatuation with Perry Smith. Properly focused, that could make for a profound premise.
But it is impossible to buy that in the course of due process, the DA and his staff would repeatedly return to this carny just to be taunted with her knowledge of their private business. And while the total absence of her own defense attorney seems criminal enough, that reality check is ultimately without consequence because no one ever ever actually talks to her about the case. They just talk about pain.
Worst is the play’s ultimate “what would you do?” dilemma, and be warned, this requires a spoiler: Sanchez can’t resist positioning Maritza in Fatima’s shoes, for she too has the opportunity to end another’s suffering. But Sanchez makes his finale about more than just Maritza’s dying mother. What about Fatima, who is facing life behind bars without her own TV? – as if her boredom is equivalent to Luz’s real pain.
Maritza acts against the moral fiber of everything she believes religiously and professionally. Her choices are so wrong, and so wrongly presented as heroic, as to be insulting. So despite a lot of good work by a fine ensemble, I’m not swallowing this poison pill.
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
** | “Unmerciful Good Fortune”
DRAMA|Firehouse Theatre Company|Written by Edwin Sanchez|Directed by Michael R. Duran|Starring Jackie Billotte, Laura Chavez and Sherry Coca-Candelaria|John Hand Theater, 7653 E. First Place|THROUGH DEC. 17|8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays|2 hours, 40 minutes|$15-$18|303-562-3232
