Over the years, San Diego has been home to a handful of repertory theater companies.
For a big chunk of its history, the Old Globe has staged Shakespeare rep with the same cast performing two Bard plays that rotated throughout the summer months. Lamb’s Players Theatre had a repertory company for many years. And New Village Arts experimented with the concept for one season.
Rep is a way to showcase the versatility of a company of artists, while also giving the audience a good reason to come back and see the same performers take on very different roles.
Now, Moxie Theatre has taken on rep, with two very different shows that have four actors in common: the 2005 Broadway musical adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 novel “Little Women” and Alexis Scheer’s 2019 dark supernatural play “Our Dear Drug Lord.”
Both opened Saturday, with alternating performances through Dec. 8. Both plays are staged on the same set with a few small adaptations, but each has a different director.
The common thread between these two theatrical stories is a group of four young women straining to define themselves and assert their independence in male-dominated American society. For “Little Women,” it’s the unmarried March sisters in Civil War-era Massachusetts. In “Drug Lord,” it’s four teen classmates who gather in a treehouse for secret séances in 2008 Miami.
On the upside, these plays are both well-cast and well-produced and the four actors who star in both plays — Mikaela Macias, Lena Ceja, Becca Myers and Nio Russell — are exceptional triple-threat performers who create distinctly different personas for each play. The downside is that the two shows are so vastly different that finding a common audience to buy tickets for both might be challenging.
“Little Women” is a traditional, sweet, family-friendly, G-rated period musical and “Drug Lord” is a R-rated supernatural thriller with gasp-inducing violence that should be marketed with a trigger warning.
Leigh Scarritt served as both director and music director for “Little Women,” which has a 10-member cast packed with big-belting vocalists. Macias leads the cast as the aspiring novelist Jo, who rebels furiously against the patriarchy and traditional female roles. Macias takes her character on a nice arc from hard and unyielding in act one to gentler and much wiser in act two.
Other standouts in the “Little Women” cast are Michelle Caravia as the amusingly droll Aunt March; the tender and understated Constance Jewell Lopez as Marmee; the charming Will Doyle as Mr. Laurence; and two exceptional vocalists — Tanner Vydos and DeAndre Simmons — as romantic suitors Laurie and Professor Bhaer, respectively.
The singers perform to a recorded score. On opening day, the volume was frequently overwhelming in the intimate 99-seat theater, and some of the vocal lines were shouted rather than sung. The acting also occasionally felt too big for the small space.
Moxie’s executive artistic director Desireé Clarke Miller directed “Our Dear Drug Lord,” which has a cast of four, plus two “spiritual” visitors conjured up during a séance.
The fast-paced, 90-minute play begins as a comedy, with four private school girls meeting, gossiping, flirting, fighting and sipping Starbucks drinks. Gradually the plot deepens into a feminist story about grief, guilt and corrosive secrets. The girls are of the school’s Dead Leaders Club, which each year studies a different historic (male) leader’s influence on culture and society. In 2008, that leader is Colombian cartel leader Pablo Escobar, who died in a 1993 shootout.
Ceja leads the cast as the secretive and grief-stricken club leader Pipe, who has personal reasons for wanting to revive Escobar’s spirit. Macias plays Kit, the club’s newest member who immigrated with her mother from Colombia. And Myers and Russell play club Zoom and Squeeze, respectively.
The play is fast-paced and gripping, but it also feels unfocused, with too many plot threads and no explanation for the sharp turn it takes into darkness toward the end. There are two disturbing acts of ritual sacrifice in the play, one especially gruesome, and the finale will leave non-Spanish-speakers in the dark. But everything becomes more clear after the show.
Moxie’s repertory experiment is the most expensive production in the company’s 20-year history and it deserves an audience. But due to the vastly different content and themes, it might find two unique audiences.
‘Little Women: The Broadway Musical’ & ‘Our Dear Dead Drug Lord’
When: Two shows are rotating in repertory through Dec. 8. 7 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays; 2 and 7 p.m. Saturdays; 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays. (Check website for play schedule)
Where: Moxie Theatre, 6663 El Cajon Blvd., Ste. N, Rolando
Tickets: $30-$63 (“Little Women”), $20-$50 (“Drug Lord”)
Phone: 858-598-7620
Online: moxietheatre.com
