By Luisa De la Concha Montes
My Uncle is Not Pablo Escobar is a dynamic and exuberant play that explores and celebrates what it means to be a Latinx in London. It’s a detective story peppered with telenovela-style drama.
The primary story follows Catalina, a Colombian journalist who’s investigating a cash laundering scheme in Canary Wharf. She is formidable and decided, keen to threat every little thing, together with her personal security to unveil the reality. Her youthful sister, Alejandra, cleans places of work at night time to make ends meet whereas making an attempt to move her GCSEs. Alejandra turns into an unwilling confederate in Catalina’s scheme, and collectively, they rekindle their long-forgotten sisterhood, assembly different non-blood associated sisters alongside the best way, similar to Honey and Lucia.
The primary story is interposed with comical skits that mock stereotypes. Dance routines are overlapped with ironic recreation present interactions (“are you able to move the British Citizen quiz?”). This unlikely mixture of codecs and concepts works to nice impact. For example, in a single scene, the forged stroll throughout the stage seductively, making use of body-sized fruit props to mock the objectification by the white male gaze (which exoticises Latinas as uncommon fruits). The scene is so ridiculous that it despatched the theatre right into a match of laughter.
Regardless that the writers Valentina Andrade and Elizabeth Alvarado will not be bodily current on stage, they seem continuously. Their voices break the fourth wall, booming from above with a light-weight impact that makes them really feel like God-like figures. These interjections remind us that the story is rooted of their private experiences, forcing us to consider the boundaries between fiction and actuality, and bringing us again to the bodily area – Brixton, a multicultural hub that could be a dwelling testomony to the existence of the Latinx neighborhood.
The versatile stage design screams “watch me!”. A Mexican pink staircase transforms right into a nightclub or an workplace constructing, easily holding collectively the transitions with out interfering with the beat. Like Latinx identification itself, it transforms with the context with out dropping its boldness.
Every character has been fastidiously crafted to exhibit the breadth and depth of the Latinx neighborhood, and to convey to the fore the systemic inequalities that pressured the characters to maneuver to England. For example, the connection between Catalina and Alejandra explores how migration can rupture household dynamics. Furthermore, Honey’s worry of deportation and Lucia’s activist way of life sheds gentle on the prevailing inequalities locally itself (“Whiteness is only a mindset of entitlement.”). All performers have a British Latinx identification, and the ethnicity of the characters can change to replicate the performer’s personal identification. This creates one other layer of that means, because it rapidly turns into evident that these will not be actors performing fiction; they’re reliving their very own experiences, putting their very own tales heart stage.
The play’s opening scene names all of the classes within the official checklist of ethnic teams within the UK – a listing that excludes Latinx folks. Activists have been campaigning to alter that. Due to this fact, its intention is to make the Latinx neighborhood, one of many fastest-growing migrant communities in London, seen. Nonetheless, it does a lot greater than that.
The forged’s confidence, mixed with the spectacular stage design appears like a deliberate analogy to being Latinx. The truth is, every stylistic selection drills down the purpose that the Latinx neighborhood can’t be streamlined to single narrative selections. It overtly resists stereotyping as a result of it sheds gentle into the collective richness and energy of our neighborhood. My Uncle is Not Pablo Escobar could also be greatest categorised as a comedic memoir.
On a private word, I left the theatre in tears. Not as a result of it was a tragic story (it’s not, it’s humorous and filled with pleasure), however as a result of it was so emotional and empowering to lastly see my experiences on stage. What’s the level of theatre if it doesn’t communicate again to us?
My Uncle is Not Pablo Escobar runs by way of 24 June.
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