Driving to a heartfelt ‘Beat’ at TheatreWorks
ROAD TRIP: Mateo (Jon Viktor Corpuz) and his mother, Diane (Lee Ann Payne), are driving from Ohio to California in TheatreWorks Silicon Valley's world premiere of A Driving Beat by Jordan Ramirez Puckett. Photo by Kevin Berne
Fourteen-year-old Mateo really, really wants to reach San Diego in time for his 15th birthday in just a few days, but his single mom, Diane, doesn’t fly. So they settle on a five-day, cross-country roadtrip from Ohio to California. But the dream trip soon hits a nightmarish bump when Diane stipulates that Mateo’s phone will remain locked in the glove compartment for the majority of the trip.
That’s a lot of road to cover with games, conversations and sullen teen responses, but this eventful family journey comprises the bulk of Jordan Ramirez Puckett’s A Driving Beat, a one-act play from TheatreWorks Silicon Valley in a rolling world premiere with Flint Repertory Theatre.
ON THE ROAD: Mateo’s poetic, hard-driving reveries are inspired by sounds in the world around him. Photo by Kevin Berne.
This is a straightforward, handsomely produced play with impressive performances from each of its three actors in the intimate SecondStage space at the Mountain View Center for Performing Arts. Mercifully, director Jeffrey Lo leaves any actual representation of a car out of the performance space, so the actors are only confided to rolling office chairs and other simple set pieces that roll in and out of the space. There’s a sense of forward motion to the production, which is appropriate since most of its 90 minutes is in a moving vehicle with occasional stops at roadside diners and motels.
The dynamic between Mateo (Jon Viktor Corpuz) and Diane (Lee Ann Payne) is mostly loving, with occasional dips into teen angst. Diane and her late partner adopted Mateo, when his mother left him at a San Diego hospital. Being a brown boy in his Ohio high school has not been easy for Mateo, and because he wants answers about his birth mother, he’s hoping someone at the hospital will be able to help him fill in some blanks about who he is and where he comes from.
A road trip in and of itself isn’t all that interesting, but the dynamic here between a white mom and her brown son, as loving as it is, has its complexities, and she still has a lot to learn about how her son is experiencing the world and what she might not be able to provide for him.
WAFFLING: Diane and Mateo stop at the International House of Waffles, where they are served by a lively waitress (Livia Gomes Demarchi) named Reina. Photo by Kevin Berne
Corpuz is obivously older than 14, but he makes for a believable teenager because his performance is so dynamic and appealing. Mateo has a tendency to retreat inward, and these reveries are presented as hybrid spoken-word/rap performances that could be gimmicky or shallow, but the playwright and Corpuz make them intense and exciting and deeply felt – a window into the inner workings of a thoughtful and troubled young person.
Payne’s Diane is relentlessly cheerful and can-do, probably a byproduct of her life as a schoolteacher, and she clearly adores her son and wants to do everything right by him. She doesn’t speak Spanish, so she made sure he had lessons from a young age. He has questions about his birth mother, so off they head to California. Personally, she’s at a place in her life that may not be the best for her. She doesn’t see that, but Mateo does, so his isn’t the only journey of discovery happening here. Payne’s layered performance reveals the grief, fear and pain underneath all that positivity.
En route to California, everyone they meet is played by the marvelous Livia Gomes Demarchi, who is just as believable as a crush-worthy waitress for the son or a crush-worthy front desk clerk for the mom as she is as a racist authoritarian figure who messes with our central duo in Texas.
Though the play’s ending is emotionally satisfying – primarily because we’ve come to care about Mateo and Diane – it comes at the cost of narrative believability. It’s not the twist but rather how we get there that’s problematic in that it’s much too easy. So the destination brings with it some problems, but really, it’s the journey that makes A Driving Beat worth taking.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Jordan Ramirez Puckett’s A Driving Beat continues through Nov. 23 in a TheatreWorks Silicon Valley production at the Mountain View Center for Performing Arts’ SecondStage, 500 Castro St., Mountain View. Tickets are $49-$79. Call 877-662-8978 or visit theatreworks.org.
