how to make an American Son
christopher oscar peña
New Conservatory Theatre Center
Books upon books from Borders, a soft-leather bag from Coach, $1100 for fourth-row Madonna tickets — and now he wants a new car for his upcoming sixteenth birthday? Even though second-generation and definitely spoiled Orlando sees the sky as the limit as he pleads with his success-built-from-scratch, Honduran-American dad that “being gay is expensive,” he is about to find out there are new limits and consequences for his spending sprees.
But there are even tougher lessons this teen is soon to learn about being Latinx in white America in christopher oscar peña’s how to make an American Son, now in a Bay Area premiere at New Conservatory Theatre Center. Touted in marketing materials as “an audacious new comedy,” this coming of age play is in fact a no-holes-barred, darkly dramatic exploration of what it is truly like for a queer Latino — even one economically privileged — to grow up in a society where race, class, and immigration status are primary definers of who wins, who loses.
Nicolas René Rodriguez pulls out every trick in the book that any parent of a teen has at one point seen as Orlando sweet talks, wheedles, begs, pouts, erupts in indignation, and acts as a total know-it-all while trying to cajole his father to do what he wants. Pooched lips that protrude to the max, hurt looks in near tears, eyeballs that pop to almost collide with his stylish glasses, and crossed arms locked in shock are just a few of his plethora of well-planned antics to make his points.
But this time upon learning that his son has memorized his credit card number to purchase his latest extravagance, the rather low-key, usually patient Mando (Richard Perez) is drawing the line. With rare sternness, he informs his disbelieving, protesting son in no uncertain terms that he must pay off his debts by becoming intimate with a broom, mop, and vacuum as he spends his weekends as part of Mando’s company and its large, janitorial work force. To Orlando’s full-faced horror, he hears that he will “wash windows” and “scrub shit.”
Flamboyance is not a trait easily shed, even for Orlando in his janitorial scrubs. As he dances about with a long-handled duster as if on a disco stage, his cleaning partner, Rafael, silently and seriously with meticulous motions washes an office’s glass walls (part of Maya Link’s high-styled set design). The recently arriving Mexican-American youth does all he can to ignore the rapidly questioning Orlando — whom he has been advised to avoid since he is the boss’s son. Much of his drive to engage clearly comes from Orlando’s noticing how hot and built this new Latin guy, Rafael, actually is.
For Orlando, Latino boys have not been his first choice for flirting. He has always much preferred white guys like school mate Sean whose muscles bulge from his tight tank top. Orlando uses expensively acquired concert tickets to coax outwardly straight Sean on a date. Cocky with self-assured confidence deeply embedded in every smug look and posed stance, Matt Skinner’s Sean taunts and teases Orlando to near frenzy, zoning in nose to nose as they banter, with Sean’s next move teetering dangerously between a punch and a kiss as Orlando awaits either in excited anticipation.
But something surprising happens as Orlando spends more time cleaning offices with Rafael. He discovers they both crave the same music — Madonna, Janet Jackson, Celine, Whitney — and there is something about how Rafael begins to soften his glances toward him. Caleb Andrew Cabrera employs enticing subtlety and sexy mystery while also overall retaining in his Rafael a healthy dose of hesitation and doubt how much to engage with this much-Americanized son of the boss. But the electricity grows enough that Orlando is beginning to think he may be able to fulfill his gay-accepting mother’s dream: ‘Bring me home a nice Latin boy.’
What seems more and more to be a romcom in the making takes a sudden shift when Mando meets for a crucial contract renegotiation in the office of a major client, Dick — an increasingly arrogant and repulsive Michael Phillis. As the two jockey toward a signing, luck would have it that weekend janitor and son Orlando walks in just as Dick’s son, Sean, also appears in order to meet his dad. After their previous steamy night of hormone-raging sweat post-concert, Orlando is not yet ready to halt an immediate flirting with a Sean who is stunned, a bit repulsed, yet also clearly still aroused to see Orlando in a janitor’s outfit.
Like a field full of loaded mines, the office suddenly becomes a war zone. A lily white father’s prejudice against Latinos and gays combines with his sudden realization that the negotiating, Honduran-born Mando is likely much richer than he. His reactions sets off an explosive chain reaction of major consequences for all. A script that has up until this point been fairly mild, overall fun, and romantically predictable now becomes all too familiar of how ugly the real world actually is.
When Mando soon afterwards catches Orlando and Rafael lip-locked, a Latin immigrant father’s own class and racial prejudices prove just how American the cleaning mogul himself has become.
Orlando’s introduction into a world beyond credit card shopping sprees and hunts for a hot kiss or two becomes a turning point for him with major consequences. The lessons he learns are not the ones his father ever intended him to learn.
Excellent overall performances from this accomplished cast (including also an impressive outing by Monica Rose Slater) unfortunately are not always enough to keep the ninety-minutes of peña’s script from dragging as its dozen or so scenes unfold. In particular, a number of scenes end with an impact of blah, often with a line that seems desperately aching for audience reaction but usually is met with silence. The final climax for all its high drama as conceived by Director Ben Villegas Randle and performed with heightened emotions by both father and son (Mando and Orlando) seems overly abrupt, concocted, and a bit dissatisfying.
Still, in this NCTC production of christopher oscar peña’s how to make an American Son, timely and important messages are powerfully conveyed how deeply entrenched is the felt entitlement, superiority, and privilege by much of our white-dominated society. We see that even when a recent immigrant of color has successfully acquired the American Dream for his family, that Dream can too quickly become a nightmare when it bumps up too closely to the inflated ego of the majority culture.
Rating: 3.5 E
how to make an American Son continues through May 10 2026, in a ninety-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
