Don Mendo

Spain has produced many literary greats, and one of the most beloved is Pedro Muñoz Seca, famous for his comedies and parodies. His best known work, Don Mendo's Revenge is being mounted by the BFA in grand style, typical of their commitment to bringing fine theatre to the community.

The cast has been carefully assembled and directed by Agustin Coppola from the adaptation in English by Margarita Lamas. The Spanish version has also been redrafted, and the result is an evening of comedy and laughter in the great tradition of Spanish classical theatre. Don Pedro Muños Seca wrote his plays in poetic rhyme, something like Shakespeare's meter, and like the Bard, he often invented words for his characters. Seca's concern for rhyme and comedy sometimes had the actors saying things that no one understood, but were so nonsensical that people laughed anyway. The BFA has kept that tradition alive and well in this production.

Don Mendo is a quasi aristocrat deep in debt, loved by Madgalena, a beautiful but ambitious noble lady. Her father has promised her in marriage to Don Pero, a wealthy nobleman, with a jealous streak. The lovers are discovered one evening, when she has given Mendo a necklace to sell to cover his debts. To save her honor, he pretends to be a thief who broke in to steal her jewels. The father orders him detained, and to round the charade, she demands that he be killed. How's that for true love?

Friends help him escape, and he wanders off swearing eventual revenge on the woman who betrayed him. Along the way, he changes his identity to Renato, a wandering troubadour and hooks up with a Moor girl, who loves him passionately. However, he can't get the beautiful Magdalena out of his mind. By chance, the former lovers meet again, and she falls in love with Renato, unaware he is Mendo. Eventually, he tells her, and she swears that it was he whom she really always loved. However, she has also been involved with another. The King of Spain, no less! When this girl fools around, she doesn't fool around with just anybody! The King's wife, seeing Renato, falls in love with him, and makes a date for a secret rendezvous and when the Moor girl finds out, she decides to be there to get rid of her competition. By chance, the King and Magdalena have also made a date at the same place, and as plays go, the entire cast winds up at the "secret" meeting place. Some secret.

The chaos that follows could only happen in a play. All the characters seem to have swords, and the result would make any modern production proud in the violence, death and gore. Except this one is funny. There is something strange when an audience cheers and claps when a character is impailed by a three foot sword, but in the tradition of theatre, there seems to be justification for each demise. The revenge that Don Mendo has been desperately seeking comes about in the most bizarre manner, an even then the audience laughed.

As usual, the production values at BFA are top notch. The sets and lighting are imaginative, and the costuming is lavish. We're not sure why the Italian Vivaldi's music was played at the last scene, being that there are so many Spanish composers with equally light and spirited themes, but, it worked well anyway. The cast of dozens starred Ernesto Miyares as Don Mendo and Paola Bontempi as Magdalena. They easily stole the show together, but Antonio Mesme as Nunio, the father and Ray Michaels Quiroga as the husband could not have been better cast. Other cast members included Daniel Light as King Alfonso, Margarita Lamas as Magdalena's chamber maid, Michelle Gil as the Queen of Spain and Ray Lopez as Moncada, a friend of Mendo. Kiko Mahetcha was very funny as Ali, and Flavia Saravalli played a perfect Azofaifa, the Moor girl who loved Mendo.

If there is one concern it is that at times the story got a bit muddled and one didn't quite understand who was doing what to whom, and why. Some of the actors got so excited with their role, they tended to over act and ham it up. When Daniel Light plays the jail keeper, he's not as good as when he does the King, and Kiko Mahetcha is much better as Ali than as Froilán. Michelle Gil sings a great number at the beginning and we would have liked to hear more.

The production will play in English and Spanish on alternate weekends at the Los Angeles Theater Center on Spring Street. Call (323) 225-4044 for tickets and information.