REVIEW: Momia en el Clóset (GALA Hispanic Theatre)
(Cue: “The Bitch is Back” by Elton John.)
Eva Perón, that is. The Argentine despot that they can’t seem to stop making musicals about, you know the one? Seemingly too soon after we got that fashionable attempt at the famous British interpretation last year, Evita is back on our shores via the minds at GALA, a re-mounting of a 2009 premiere of theirs. This time, with a lot less physical baggage— she brings with her just the clothes on her back. After all, it’s all she has left, being dead. Evita the musical famously ends on the note that her body was missing for 17 years. (I’ve always found that to be an oddly unceremonious note to end the show on.) But haven’t you wondered what became of that? Mummy in the Closet seeks to answer it, via a musically comedic take on the road to the afterlife that isn’t exactly paved with gold.
Book/Music
Mummy opens up as Eva takes her final breaths, succumbing to cancer at the meek age of 33. Tragedy, the beloved mother of a nation taken too soon — or not soon enough, if you were to ask her opponents on the stage left balcony. “Viva el cancer!” they sing in the opening lament, framing the piece as a melodramatic epilogue to her life. The live orchestrations swell and the throngs of Argentines glimmer with movement below. When her surviving husband Juan finally relinquishes her body to the mortician for “eternal preservation”, he ponders his position; how can he functionally prevent this dead body from ever actually decomposing? He tries new cocktails of bodily preservation — both for her body and his, orally, oddly enough— ultimately succeeding in creating the world’s most luxe mummy. All for naught though as the South American nation erupts into revolution, and with its political stability in tumult so goes the person whose death wrought it.
This number and its precedent are where the whiplash first hits. It introduces itself to you as a potentially serious hallmark of bodily sacredness, a parable about respecting the deceased and a venerated human figure, but it’s really a comedy a-la “Weekend at Bernie’s” about the ever-flabbergasting antics a dead body goes through about the greater Hispanosphere. It does, seemingly randomly, attempt to return to its grounded origins, but by then it’s too late. Its narrative focus shines brightest when it leans into the silliness of everyone involved, whether they realize it or not, with the storage or transport of Eva. In fact, there’s more than a few numbers that are genuinely quite impressive feats of song-and-dance storytelling that is classic Theatre(tm). This isn’t to say it needs to be 100% funny all the time — in fact there’s several serious moments that implore one to consider the horrific desecration going on. The hot-potatoing of the most politically consequential woman in your continent’s modern history like she’s a cursed pirate robe simply makes for a hilarious premise on its own. With enough tone adjusting and weight balances (such as a first act that’s much too long and a second that focuses too much on inconsequential characters, plus a weak ending), I think this makes for a great idea whether your Spanish is native or nonexistent. Mine happens to fall somewhere in the middle as a non-native speaker, which lets me bridge the gap a little, but I wouldn’t say it’s enough for me to justify many of the squeamishly macabre English translations in the often-catchy music (by Mariano Vales and added lyrics by bookwriter Gustavo Ott): I never want to see someone describe a raw, human kidney as “girlish” ever again. 6/10
Acting
I never felt connected to the ensemble in ways I have in previous GALA productions, which feels out-of-character for the house. Even the charming Fran Tapia’s turn as the titular body, whose ghostly reactions provide frequent chuckles, felt detached from the vision of the piece. Vocals are powerful and the actors are all used well by director Mariano Caligaris to shuffle between different named parts, but the vignette-style approach to Eva’s whereabouts leaves them frayed instead of a tightly-wound gaggle of Argentines. 3/10
Production
Though I found Grisele Gonzales’ scenic designs bare and underwhelming, it’s often saved by the dancing shadows and hues from Hailey LaRoe’s lighting. Costumes — especially in a riotous Act I dance number taking place in a Milanese cemetery — are superbly put-together by Becca Janney. The choreography by Valeria Cossu was expected to be great, as any musical work around Argentina would require, but what I wasn’t expecting was it to be firing at 110% the entire time. It seemed each dance number was orchestrated with detail and precision in unexpectedly powerful fashion. The rest of the musical may lack energy at times, but you cannot blame it on a lack of movement. In fact, I would argue it’s over-choreographed, as some flamboyance seemed to distract from some of the heavier scenes, or overpowered the comparatively calmer production elements around it during other ones. But know that it’s never “bad”: as frequent and mismatched as it may be, it’s damn good. 7/10
Viz
With all the deep reds and high-contrast in GALA’s key art, I didn’t expect this show to have as much humor to it. In fact, the amount of red led me to believe she’d be coming back as a vampire instead (to any other would-be Eva Peron musical biographers, feel free to take this idea.) The drab, colorless projections that curtain the pre-show staging also don’t exactly evoke any chutzpah on behalf of the directorial vision. Several people have already asked me before I even published this what the musical was even about, a testament to how it’s being pushed (not even the official press photos are that informative!) With the right information campaign, its highly interesting comedic premise could be all it needs to pick up steam. 2/10
Verdict
A surprisingly funny historical satire at its core, Momia en el Closet could stand yet another round of tweaks to continue building around its ironclad premise and frenetic production.
18/40
