Company One’s MISS
YOU LIKE HELL (ostensibly about a family divided by deportation), playing @ A.R.T.’s
Oberon Club through Jan. 27th, was written by Quira Alegria Hudes
first as a play; then around 2011 she began developing it as a musical at the
height of President Obama’s stringent immigration policies.
Hudes is no stranger
to collaboration. Her work with Lin-Manuel Miranda on IN THE HEIGHTS won them
the Tony for best musical. MISS YOU LIKE HELL, with music and lyrics by
singer/songwriter Erin McKeown, opened to acclaim Off-Broadway in 2018.
Originally focusing on one mother’s struggle to reconnect with her daughter, in
light of the current president’s attacks on immigrants, MISS YOU LIKE HELL has
a whole new resonance.
You can’t watch this
mother’s agony in MISS YOU LIKE HELL and not think of the three thousand
children unlawfully separated from their parents and lost in the “system”—with two dead—(despite identification numbers stamped, Nazi
style, on their forearms)… engineered solely to serve as a deterrent to asylum
seekers.
The musical may
represent one mother’s cross country journey to win back her child’s affection,
but McKoewn’s songs are universal. Her urgent, plaintive I’m Just One
Slip Away “treading water and waiting for the tide to rise” is a powerful, desperate
anthem not just for this mother (the charismatic Johanna Carlisle-Zapeda) but
for anyone fighting a lost cause.
MISS YOU LIKE HELL feels
a lot like IN THE HEIGHTS because of the myriad stories which break in on the main
“road trip adventure plot” (to get mother to a hearing which could lead maybe
to a temporary deportation deferral). Some of the detours interrupt the
momentum, detracting from the principal point of the journey: for Zapeda’s
estranged mother to bond with Krystal Hernandez’ headstrong, resentful
daughter.
The best songs and
the best moments are the ones which center on the bonding: McKeown’s lovely
country-rock Dance With Me “under the moonlight” reminded me of Mary
Chapin Carpenter’s lively Down at the Twist and Shout. Hernandez’
inconsolable Miss You Like Hell and mother’s ardent You Are the
Bread. I am the Hunger “Fill me up for one more day” are the showstoppers.
(Kudos to music director David Coleman’s nimble orchestra.)
While the rest of the
musical meanders all over the map, we meet kind souls who help out (and a few
unkind ones who don’t). Director Summer L. Williams and company mine the humor
from the secondary stories, like the gay couple (Matthew Murphy and John
O’Neil) whose goal is to get married in every state now that you can… and the
daunting state trooper (Cristhian Mancinas Garcia) who could, if he wanted to,
arrest mother on the spot… and the charming tamale vendor (Adrian Peguero) who
seduces mother with one bite of his pie and a tasty song.
Come to think of it,
though, she actually does the seducing… which is part of the musical’s undoing.
She sells herself as an “earth mother,” brimming with the life force of her
female ancestors, a free spirit possessing a vital spark which she wants to
pass on to her daughter… but she seems rudderless and easily distracted from
her mission. In point of fact, it’s Raijene Murchison as the park
ranger/internet follower whose courage reunites mother and daughter, more than
anything else.
The law of unintended
consequences brought me right up to the present again when the park ranger
sings an ode to our national parks praising their grand purpose: to be open to
everyone. NOT anymore. And the ranger isn’t being paid. Perhaps that’s what
MISS YOU LIKE HELL is now, not so much a mother-and-child reunion, but a stand
against that horrific, useless, obscene wall.
