Culture Clash Unmasks El Zorro

Will the Fox survive?

Comments (0) By Steven Mikulan Wednesday, Aug 1 2007

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In some ways, Zorro in Hell is a riskier and more complex undertaking than Culture Clash’s 2006 crowd-pleaser, Water & Power. The latter show, performed at the Mark Taper Forum, was a comedic melodrama whose subject was Latino politics in Los Angeles. It was mostly confined to a motel room and had a dramatic arc that was visible for miles. Zorro in Hell, however, constantly moves beyond Clasher’s inn room to the inner room of his mind, among several other locales. Here, set designer Christopher Acebo performs essential magic in building a versatile turntable stage that not only shifts between locations but incorporates film projections.

Taccone’s actors, who include Joseph Kamal as Zorro and his foppish (actually, swishbuckling) alter ego, Don Diego, are exemplary (Montoya, Salinas and Sigüenza all play multiple roles), even if their lines are not always the subtlest. If an actor has to shout “Fuck Bush!” during the show, then the writers either can’t control their political piety or don’t trust the audience to think for itself. For most of the evening, though, Culture Clash skewers the politically corrected and connected accordingly.

Clasher dances for his supper at the inn. (Photo by kevin berne)

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The Zorro I knew as a 5-year-old was a heroic antidote to the clownish Mexican stereotype that was only then, in the late 1950s, just beginning to recede from TV and movie screens. In fact, throughout its long Hollywood lineage, the Zorro mythos has mostly respected both Don Diego’s bravery and his Mexican heritage. (For a comprehensive Zorro Web site discussing his evolution and attendant issues, see www.zorrolegend.com.) The reasons are not so easy to explain.

Part of it may be the distinction Anglo audiences created in their minds between literary and historical Mexicans (Benito Juárez, Emiliano Zapata) — nobles who posed no modern threat — and the Stinkin’ Badges variety enshrined by cartoons, Fritos ads and lesser cowboy movies. Or it may be our perceptions of Zorro being more Castilian than mestizo, an act of ethnic denial common to the time. For instance, in John Huston’s Why We FightWWII propaganda films, America’s ethnic groups are paraded past the camera, Latinos were shown on horseback and called “Spaniards.” And, as one Raymond Chandler character says by way of claiming his racial superiority, “My blood is Spanish, pure Spanish. Not nigger-Mex and not Yaqui-Mex.”

Culture Clash try to examine all the aspects of what has made Zorro an enduring icon for Anglos and Latinos alike. Their inability, so far, to come to terms with Zorro doesn’t spell defeat but only underscores the elusiveness of their subject. In the end, we’re still left asking, “Who was that masked man?”

ZORRO IN HELL | Written by CULTURE CLASH (Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas and Herbert Sigüenza) | At the RICARDO MONTALBÁN THEATRE, 1615 Vine St., Hlywd. | Through August 19 | (877) 359-6776