Allá en San Fernando Collectivo El Pozo presents Allá en San Fernando as a commemoration of 72 would-be immigrants murdered on August 24, 2010, victims of corruption and bloodlust along the border between the U.S. and Mexico. Raúl Doronte’s play (which is performed in Spanish with English supertitles) begins on a desert plain, with two snickering assassins, a knife, and three helpless women—Judith (Leslie Magdalena Holguín), Salomé (José Rochel), and María (Carolina Escrich). As they mutter prayers under their breath, the women are summarily executed—and I don’t know how to describe what comes next except as a highly redemptive clown journey through the afterlife. It is so weird, and so weirdly beautiful, to hear these dead souls gossip and tap dance; Holguín is delightful as a kind of ringleader. The play allows itself such winning levity in its second act that the mournful aspects—the solemnity, the candles—start to feel overceremonious and dull. —Max Maller
Dogs of Rwanda Written and performed by Sean Christopher Lewis, this powerful world-premiere production skillfully balances two stories, one public (the 1994 Rwandan genocide), the other personal (an account of two young American missionaries caught up in the upheaval, told by one of the survivors), without getting bogged down in lots of reportage or distorting the facts for the sake of a ripping yarn. Instead, Lewis delivers the gripping tale of a callow, lovesick young man who only went to Africa to be with his crush and got much, much more than he bargained for. —Jack Helbig
Mary Shelley Sees the Future Most people would agree that Frankenstein author Mary Shelley was ahead of her time. Playwright Olivia Lilley and Runaways Lab Theatre make it literal in Mary Shelley Sees the Future. Through some inexplicable force, a despondent Shelley swaps bodies with an aspiring young 21st-century writer named Mya, who, upon recognizing the switch, is eager to tout her feminist principles to those living in the 19th century. Meanwhile, Shelley is getting a taste of what it’s like in present-day Logan Square: sex, pot, yoga, coffeehouses. Lilley’s instincts are good up to a point. She gets enticingly close to making a bold statement about sexuality and gender equality, but its impact is diminished by too many subplots that don’t come together. —Matt de la Peña
