"Latin History for Morons" at Berkeley Rep

In the summer, between their regular subscription seasons, Berkeley Rep often has some kind of special production. Past instances have included shows by monologist Mike Daisey, actress/educator Anna Deveare Smith, and perhaps most notably a pre-NYC run of "No Man's Land" starring Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan. The shows are different from their regular season's plays, but generally interesting and of high quality.

And then there is this summer, where actor/comedian John Leguizamo presents a one-man show called "Latin History for Morons." To be fair, many in the audience found the show extremely funny. I was not one of them.

Disclaimer

I've never been a big fan of the series of "how-to" books named " For Dummies." I realize that it's meant to be tongue-in-cheek and make seem more approachable to non-experts. But it always seemed condescending, if not insulting, to the audience. In part this is because the term implies not just ignorance or unawareness, but inability to learn: there is a difference between "uninformed" and "dumb."

And the term "moron" is way more loaded to me than "dummy," so this suggests to me that either he really disrespects his audience, or he has a point to make about just how ignorant we are, and perhaps why. So I come into the show hoping that he's got some insight, not only into what I don't know about history, but why that is.

The Show

The show is kind of a rambling stand-up comedy routine, riffing on Latin history since the arrival of Columbus and/or Cortez. There is kind of a thread running through the show that the actor was motivated by trying to help his son, being bullied in middle school, complete an assignment about Heroes, which gives him a reason to try to dredge up Latin heroes from his supposedly limited knowledge of history.

Unfortunately, he shows little respect to any of the historical figures on any side of any encounter, up to and including himself, his family, his teachers, his therapist, etc. Everybody is pretty much just a set-up for a stereotype so he can make a joke. Montezuma is gay, so he has to lisp and prance around a bit. There are bits that verge on creativity and humor, but a lot of it is just riffs, tropes, and recycled jokes.

[Spoiler...I guess.] Ultimately, his son sort of miraculously manages to not only complete his assignment in spite of "help" from his father, but his last-second completion is somehow selected to be the graduation address, where the big reveal is that after searching his background for any sort of hero, unearthing only losers and such, he concludes that he is his own hero.

To me it came off as kind of a TV sitcom meets an "uplifting" after-school special, but less earnest and with more old jokes. Obviously, there is an audience for all those things, and much of the audience seemed quite delighted. Of course, they gave him a huge ovation just for stepping on the stage at the outset, so it was clear that they were primed to enjoy whatever he threw at them.

All I can say is, it didn't appeal to me. Director Tony Taccone and Berkeley Rep are capable of so much more than this, it was quite disappointing to see that this is their idea of what their subscribers want between seasons.

Bottom Line

Whatever hopes I had for insight coming out of this were dashed and/or abandoned. Leguizamo was so busy yukking it up that he seems to have neglected to put a point to all his slurs and insults. And that, perhaps, should have been the director's job, to make sure that was in there somewhere.

In some sense, I think Leguizamo is trying to do too much, trying to make statements about bullying, Latin identity, and (perhaps) history and other education. But at the end we're left with little in the way of answers or even insights, just a few platitudes tacked on to the end.

Reading the interview in the program with Taccone and Leguizamo, it's clear that they like each other and found a lot to laugh about in coming up with this show. Unfortunately, I think that relationship might have blinded them to the shortcomings of the script. And they get a lot of laughs from the audience and they sell a lot of tickets, so maybe that's enough for them.

Your mileage, as they say, may vary. But I'd say you're better off going either to a real play, or if you want laughs, go to a comedy club. There are some terrific, insightful comics out there who actually have a point to their comedy beyond just playing up stereotypes and making you laugh.