‘Laughs in Spanish’ is funny, sí

The Miama-based comedy has its world premiere at the Denver Center

This one kicks off with one of the most magnificent bouts of cussing and swearing I’ve seen onstage in some time. In both English and Spanish, art-gallery manager Mariana (Stephanie Machado) reacts to the fact that, on the day of an important exhibit, every single one of the artist’s paintings have vanished from the walls.

So begins the world premiere of Laughs in Spanish by Alexis Scheer, a comedy set during Art Basel — a big art fair in Miami Beach held every December. Mariana is the epitome of the high-strung manager who is surrounded by supremely unhelpful people who seem to undermine every effort to remedy the situation. Her initial volley of epithets, delivered upstage, perfectly establishes the level of frenzy and emotion to come during the rest of the show.

On hand at the crime scene is intern and MFA candidate Carolina (Danielle Alonzo) and her boyfriend and cop Juan (Luis Vega). An aspiring painter, Carolina would very much like to have her own works hung to replace the stolen ones — a suggestion Mariana dismisses outright as she plows along with the planning for the evening’s events, missing exhibit notwithstanding.

Danielle Alonzo and Luis Vega in ‘Laughs in Spanish’ | Photo: Jamie Kraus

Then along comes her mother, a bombastic but fading Latina film star named Estella (Maggie Bofill) accompanied by her assistant Jenny (Olivia Hebert). There’s no love lost between Mariana and Estella, and we learn that — surprise surprise — she was something other than Mother of the Year and that Mariana’s father wasn’t around for her upbringing.

Learning of the missing-paintings catastrophe, Estella hopes to gain a few points by helping out, and there are plenty of laughs surrounding her efforts to save the show by bringing her own Hollywood-infused take on what an event like this should look like. Meanwhile, we find out Carolina and Juan may know a bit more about the crime than they’ve let on, and that Jenny and Mariana were friends in high school with a romantic past.

Mother-daughter tension: Maggie Bofill and Stephanie Machado in ‘Laughs in Spanish’ | Photo: Jamie Kraus

Served up in a fast-paced 90 minutes sans intermission in the Denver Center’s Singleton Theatre, director Lisa Portes doesn’t let off the gas as the story unfolds in a flurry of Spanglish, estrogen and spattered paint. Bofill is very funny as the Columbian-born actor who’s tried only somewhat successfully to avoid being typecast into housekeeper roles. (At least the maid she played in a recent Batman film, she tells us, was “radioactive.”) Mariana, for her part, doesn’t give a damn about her mother’s fame — she’s just bitter about her shitty childhood and resists her mother’s efforts to help as much as possible. And just when she’s starting to warm a little to Estella, she learns there’s a shady, ulterior motive to her visit to Miami.

Laughs in Spanish does, indeed, have plenty of laughs throughout and strong performances from all the cast members. Set on an almost bare stage, there’s plenty of room for the actors to bumble about trying to solve the mystery of the missing paintings, cater and decorate, resolve long-simmering family issues, deal with an unexpected pregnancy and explore a long-simmering romance.

And while there may be some light exploration into social issues about Latinx representation in our culture, ultimately Laughs in Spanish is a simple, silly comedy that perhaps takes on a few too many threads. I found the story of Carolina and Juan, while sweet, to be largely inconsequential to the plot and not especially funny. The extraordinary coincidence of Jenny being Estella’s assistant was a bit hard to swallow, and there’s just not enough time in the play to give the relationship between her and Mariana any kind of weight.

Laughs in Spanish is, at its heart, a mother-daughter comedy with a healthy dash of Latin spice. The script’s shortcomings aren’t a major deviation from what’s an otherwise fun night at the theatre, with plenty of laughs and a strong cast to see it through.

As Mariana and Jenny, Stephanie Machado and Olivia Hebert rekindle an old romance. | Photo: Jamie Kraus