Like the heart and mind of many a 15-year-old girl, “I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter” — now showing at Denver’s Kilstrom Theatre — brims with feelings and thoughts, fears and dreams. Unlike most teenagers, though, Júlia Reyes (Rosa Isabella Salvatierria), the play’s lead character and our guide into her roiling and prickly world, has recently lost her sibling.
The resounding blare of a semi signals how 22-year-old Olga (Heather Lee Echeverria) — the perfect one — met her death.
Júlia Reyes (Rosa Isabella Salvaterria, left) and the spirit of her sister, Olga (Heather Lee Echeverria). (Jamie Kraus Photography, provided by the Denver Center)
Playwright Isaac Gómez adapted the best-selling young adult novel by Erika L. Sánchez. (Earlier this year, it was reported that actor-producer-and-more America Ferrera will be directing the big-screen version of Sánchez’s book about grief and coming into one’s own for Amazon. )
Although Júlia has experienced a tragedy, the play leans into the comedy of a tart-mouthed and self-involved kid navigating the gulf between her ambitions and her parents’ more traditional ethos. For Amá and Apá Reyes, “perfect” means dutiful, feminine, chaste.
It’s a lot of pressure for a bright, defiant teen who tromps around in red Converse sneakers, a black hoodie, a David Bowie T-shirt and pen and notebook at the ready. And that, by the way, is her ensemble for her sister’s funeral.
Early on, Júlia learns that her sister may not have been the beacon her parents celebrated and now mourn. So, who was this big sister Júlia did not know everything about and can no longer ask questions of? This mystery tugs at Júlia throughout the play. She keeps her quasi-“Nancy Drew” investigations from her parents because as misunderstood as she feels (as she is), what she might learn could be doubly devastating.
In the wake of Olga’s death, Amá latches onto the idea of giving Júlia a quinceañera. “Forcing” the ritual on her rebel child might be more accurate. And Júlia is almost 16 when the party paying tribute to her entry into womanhood unfolds — or, rather, implodes. (Act II comes rich with insights into the hazardous mix of loss, teenage angst and depression.)
Nicole Betancourt portrays demanding Amá. It’s good to remember that this grieving, perpetually disappointed mother is filtered through the lens of a first-generation daughter who is unlike her in pretty much every way. We learn that Amá cleans homes because Júlia makes a crack about her seemingly hasty return to work after Olga’s death. (“The rich white people aren’t going to fire you.”) Yes, teenage girls are notoriously crabby with their mothers. Her father works at a factory and stares at the TV.
Júlia Reyes (Rosa Isabella Salvaterria, left) and Connor (Daniel Clark) share a moment in a vintage clothing store. (Jamie Kraus Photography, provided by the Denver Center)
There is a gulf — educational, potentially class-wise — that can widen between immigrant parents and their first-gen children. It’s one that parents court in a sense, but one that can hurt, too. What happens when parents can’t recognize themselves in their children? What happens in the reverse?
Júlia reads, writes and hangs out with her bestie Lorena (a vivacious Leslie Sophia Pérez). The duo is joined, but also possibly upended, by Juanga, played by Brandon Rivera. (“Like the singer?” the girls ask when he introduces himself. Yes — and look him up.) That the eye shadow- and lip liner-wearing Latinx teen loves the big gesture, the bold flourish doesn’t mean he’s not vulnerable.
Júlia’s English teacher, Mr. Ingman (John Plumpis), is a champion of the aspiring writer. At an indie bookstore, over classics by Walt Whitman and J.D. Salinger, she and Connor (Daniel Clark) meet cute. Their relationship’s challenges of race and class are handled with a kind of certainty (hers) and clumsiness (his). Their intimacy is treated by the director and her actors with a frank and sweet choreography.
Laura Alcalá Baker directs the talented ensemble and the play with a sharp sense of purpose but also of place. Like the playwright and the book’s author, Baker too is a Chicago-area denizen. The set in the Denver Center’s 360-degree theater (by Arnel Sancianco) evokes that city with its L trains, West Side neighborhoods and the northern suburb of Evanston, all the while knowingly nodding at the existence of the area’s sizable Latinx communities.
The play is infused with the feelings, concerns and insights of its lead, some of them acute, some of them understandably undisciplined. If “I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter” feels young, it’s because Júlia is, contrary to her sense of self, young.
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Gómez’s adaptation is thoughtful and loving. It is also jam-packed, and I couldn’t help wishing it had been tighter. Such are the challenges of adaptation. Still, Sunday’s audience laughed a great deal. And, I imagine — but didn’t look around through my teary eyes — that others were struck by the play’s final moments of familiar reconciliation and youthful possibility.
Lisa Kennedy is a Denver based freelance writer specializing in theater and film.
IF YOU GO
“I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter.” Written by Isaac Gómez from the book by Erika L. Sánchez. Directed by Laura Alcalá Baker. Featuring Rose Isabella Salvatierra, Heather Lee Echeverria, Nicole Betancourt, Leslie Sophia Pérez, Alex Alpharaoh, John Plumpis, Brandon Rivera and Daniel Clark. At the Kilstrom Theatre in the Denver Performing Arts Complex, 14th and Curtis streets. Through Nov. 3. Tickets at denvercenter.org, or 303-893-4100.