Simple Mexican Pleasures

Simple Mexican Pleasures

Eric Reyes Loo

New Conservatory Theatre Center

No one would possibly dare accuse Eric of even having one toe still in the closet — not his friends, family, colleagues, or even a casual passer by on the streets of L.A.  But when his boyfriend in Seattle sends him a text that “I think it’s over” just as Eric is packing his hoards of treasured books to move north, Eric faces a crisis in wondering who he really is since this is not the first time such a break-up has happened.  

In his somewhat autobiographical new work, Simple Mexican Pleasures, playwright Eric Reyes Loo sends this other Eric Loo on a trip south to discover through his mixed Mexican and Chinese roots something he cannot yet imagine — that there is a part of his out, queer self that is in fact still hidden away and that he has yet to accept.  In this commissioned work by New Conservatory Theatre Center, his journey to self-discovery in Mexico City is a laugh-a minute — no many laughs a minute — trip that becomes as surreal as the art he so enjoys in the city’s famed museums.

After boyfriend Ryan drops his bomb on Eric via text, the only consolation Eric has is that at least it was not via a sticky note (you know, Sex in the City, Season 6, Episode 7?).  Despite the fact that his Mom warns him that she had her building’s security guard Google “Handsome gay killings in Mexico City” and now is sure the cartels will behead him, Eric is determined to head to the locus of his ancestral roots — somewhere neither he nor especially his Mexican-American Mom has ever been.  There he hopes to recover from his break-up and through Grindr, maybe even meet someone who for the first time in his string of boyfriends, is not white, hunky, and dominating … or at least not white.

In Mexico City, Eric does find in the first art museum he visits a knock-out cute Latino to cruise.  Mauricio’s reluctance to engage only heightens Eric’s ploys. (Tears always work, right, especially when one claims through sobbing to suffer from ‘crycalepsy” — maybe a cousin of ‘narcolepsy?’)  

After he has used all his dramatic arts to convince Mauricio to meet up later, out of the walls of hung art emerge three, local relatives Eric did not know he had.  That they are a guitar-playing, dead, great aunt he has never met; a swishy Aztec warrior bedecked in feathers and not much else;  and a black-clad, rather serious Chinese man who claims to be one of the first slaves called “chinos” brought to Mexico several centuries ago at first leaves Eric with the assumption they are just strange homeless folk wandering the museum’s halls.  But when he hears from his Aunt Aurora that they are “time and space nomads,” part of a “spiritual continuum” whose essence is real, Eric becomes impatient and wants them to hurry up and teach him what they are there to do so that he can get back to his business at hand — Mauricio.

But their mission is not that simple or so quickly dispersed.  What they want from Eric is for him to bring everything that is hidden inside him to the exterior, to unmute a part of his Mexican and Chinese queerness that he is not showing or even accepting.  For a gay man who cannot imagine how he could be any more queer, gay, or whatever than he is now, the route to the self-realization his ancestors have planned is one that is full of hilarity for us as fellow travelers.  It is a tighten your seatbelt and be ready for a ride that is a rollercoaster of quips, jokes, and jabs with subjects ranging from food to history to of course, men dated and desired.  And add to that, a bit of drag and karaoke.

As Eric, Alex Rodriguez quickly becomes best buds with all of us in the intimate Walker Theatre as he confines in us with few filters his desires, his disappointments, and his dreams.  He then switches seamlessly into yet another scene with both real and surreal members of his family (or with his hot hook-up), using every ounce of his gay-imbued spectrum to express his opinions, his emotions, and his fantasies as well as his self-doubts and his inner fears.  Whether he is arguing with his Mom; debating art in his underwear post sex; or describing in delicious detail the delicacies of his $200, nine-course dinner, subtle, quiet, laid-back, or especially butch are not adjectives one would ever consider using in describing Rodriguez’s Eric.

If anyone is more a big queen than Eric, it might be his own Mom (the apple does not fall from the tree?).  Marcia Aguilar is a ton of tickles whose dramatic flings of her hands, pursing of pouting lips, and constantly shifting of full-faced expressions combine for a Mom that is full of love for her son but also capable of a quick and biting strike when crossed.  Later as Aunt Aurora, Marcia Aguilar is a guitar-strumming sweetheart who brings a lot of heart as she probes her reluctant nephew to find the song within him that he has too long failed to sing.

With style, swirl, and swish galore, Ricardo Cortes is the Aztec warrior part of Eric’s family tree who shows him that a queen bee can also be brave and strong in learning how to express his entire self.  With quick shifts in costume, make-up, and demeanor, Cortes is also the somewhat serious and reserved, mysterious and sexy Mauricio whose appearance and disappearance becomes an important part of Eric’s lesson in learning more about himself.

This quartet of fine actors is made complete by Edric Young as the enslaved “Chino” who embodies in his appearance and attitude the qualities he tells Eric that he inherited from him: snobbery, know-it-all, and a sense of being royalty (as in queen, of course).  

Edric also plays brother, Pat, whom Eric periodically tries to contact and who only appears in person as a kind of epilogue after a stage-filling climax that feels like it should be the play’s ending.  Both during the play and in hindsight a day later, the inclusion of brother Pat and his 11th hour appearance feels like an unnecessary element in Loo’s otherwise imaginatively conceived and fast-paced script.

One of the biggest delights of NCTC’s production is the colorful, full-of-surprises set designed by Kate Boyd.  With obvious yet abstract homages to Eric’s Mexican heritage, the brightly hued walls are like houses in a village in which closets, shutters, and art pieces open and unfold to reveal easily moved set pieces, a kitchen, a restaurant’s array of Michelin-worthy offerings, and more (all made more fun by Jenna Forder’s clever prop designs).  Coupled with Cassie Barnes’ lighting artistry, the setting is magical, whimsical, and ready for ancestral spirits to emerge and engage.

An ongoing, comical thread that both amuses and puzzles Eric is a soundtrack of sudden guitar strums and other music that announce and/or underline his emotions, insights, and surprises, part of Lana Palmer’s sound design that becomes almost another character of the hundred-minute (no intermission) play.  And finally, ancestors of the past would be sorely lacking without the creative costume wizardry of Jorge R. Hernández.

As Artistic Director Ed Decker told us in the Sunday, May 11 matinee I attended, Eric Reyes Loo’s Simple Mexican Pleasures is not a world premiere the current administration in D.C. wants NCTC to stage, as dastardly proven in the company’s recent notice of losing its previously granted NEA grant supporting the new work.  The extension of the show for an extra week’s run is proof that San Francisco audiences are ready to resist Trump’s troops.  Simple Mexican Pleasures is a fun and flamboyant way for theatre-goers to show Trump that a compelling queer story of an American with Mexican and Chinese immigrant roots is just the kind of  red, white, and blue (and rainbow) story that must be told.

Rating: 4 E

Simple Mexican Pleasures continues through May 18, 2025, in a hundred-minute (no intermission) production by New Conservatory Theatre Center in the Walker Theatre, 25 Van Ness Avenue at Market Street, San Francisco, CA.  Tickets are available online at https://nctcsf.org/, by box office phone at 415-861-8972, or by email at boxoffice@nctcsf.org. 

Photo Credits: Lois Tema