OLD MYTHS IN ‘DEATH OF ROSENDO’

Like Yeats’ rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem, the Bilingual Foundation of the Arts’ Theatre/Teatro continues lurching toward becoming Los Angeles’--with its immense Latino population--premier Spanish-American theater.

Major and minor grants have allowed the foundation to expand its marketing operation; the plant--with its difficult rectangular shape--feels more and more like a theater, and for its latest production, Raul de Cardenas’ “La Muerta de Rosendo” (“The Death of Rosendo”), Estela Scarlate has created a beautifully evocative set where we’re on the second floor of a house overlooking other houses and roofs, with the suggestion of a courtyard below.

However, as has been your observer’s experience with the foundation in the past, its buildup is from the outside in. The design is fetching, but the level of acting and direction is, to put it charitably, rudimentary.

It’s a tribute to Cardenas’ skill that we don’t pick up on “The Death of Rosendo” as a modern version of the Oedipus myth until the play is well under way and the story of how a man and a woman rediscover each other in new and terrible ways begins to take on a familiar ring.

The setting is Havana, 1896. Jose (John Vargas) runs a whorehouse whose business is based on the favorable dispensations of the local politicos, who are not above checking in. Despite this, the place is losing money.

Jose, aloof and mysteriously troubled, leaves the management of the place to the darkly imperious Zoila (Victoria Racimo). Changing political conditions outside (angry visits, importunings, threats from the politicians) have their effects inside (this is very pointed, and one never sees the shadowy traffic of flesh that is the mainstay of bordello life). In time, Jose’s troubles focus on Zoila, and vice versa, and as the story unveils--well, you know the rest.

There’s an interesting juxtaposition in the beginning between the peculiarly conservative style of the principals (Zoila practices Catholic liturgy, with candles) and a voodoo ceremony off-right, as if to indicate that Christianity and primitivism are at war over the souls of their subjects. This theme is dropped fairly soon, however, and the political aspect, consisting of huffy figures coming in to make angry declarations before departing, is also murky. At center is the peevish Jose, who is never without his vest that seems to button up his soul as well as his body--and the keening Zoila.

There’s no denying the old power of seeing people scratch away irresistibly at a secret that ultimately ruins them, and Margarita Galban’s direction moves things right along. But if “The Death of Rosendo” is supposed to represent Cuba and mother Spain, as we’re told in the program notes, the allegory is thin to the point of vaporousness.

And in the meantime we’re subjected to a self-conscious and overexcited style of acting that seems to be the foundation’s hallmark right now. This observer’s experience of its productions, and “The Death of Rosendo” is no exception, is not unlike watching Latin-American soaps on Channel 34.

Performances in Spanish on Wednesdays and Fridays, 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m.; in English, Thursdays and Saturdays, 8 p.m., at 421 N. Avenue 19, Lincoln Heights, (213) 225-4044, through June 29.