The timely, intense performance is set in an intimate venue at Odell Brewery in Fort Collins

At the heart of Miguel Muñoz’s world premiere of October Surprise is a border crisis and a high-stakes Senate race in Texas with a load of sibling rivalry thrown in. This production by Fort Collins’ OpenStage Theatre & Company is staged in the small community room of Odell Brewing Company and makes for a very intimate evening. (I had to be sure to keep my legs uncrossed for fear of getting in the actors’ way.)

In his director’s statement, Muñoz defines an “October surprise” as “a significant revelation or event in the month prior to an election that has the potential to shift public opinion about an election candidate and that is often orchestrated to influence the election’s outcome.” And while there is this kind of surprise in his play, there are several other surprises that keep the audience holding its breath throughout the performance.

As the play opens, we see the brother, Antonio (Davie Gonzalez) and sister, Maria (Jordan Hull) preparing for their day ahead. We then see Cindy (Jessica MacMaster), Maria’s best friend and manager, trying to convince Maria, a passionate and prominent immigrant lawyer, to run against her brother, “the new charismatic face of conservatism.”

While Maria is at first adamant she will not get in the way of her older brother’s dreams to be in office, Cindy is quite persuasive and Maria eventually agrees. Thus begins the campaign and debates between the politically opposite siblings.

Maybe, like me, you’ve had enough of barely coherent debates where candidates mostly yell and talk over one another. Even with the fiction of the play, it still gave me the heebie-jeebies as I viewed yet another political debate covering many of the same issues the current campaigns are.

It makes sense, of course, that this play is on stage now, but I do wonder if it is perhaps overload. If what we need right now is something light and uplifting, instead we get some very powerful and divisive dialog, a lot of cussing and a good idea of what happens to a family when two siblings decide to run against each other in a polarized political environment.

Trigger warnings galore

The play’s intensity prompted a number of trigger warnings from OpenStage. These included violence and abuse. Indeed, there were times throughout the play that I shut my eyes or turned my head away in anticipation of what was coming.

Yet through it all, the rivalry and the controversy, we get the underlying story of a family, an immigrant mother and her brother crossing the border, an abusive uncle, two unknown fathers and a brother and sister supporting one another through it all. It is this story and the undoing of this family that shines through all of the political rhetoric on the surface.

The actors did an excellent job embracing their roles with the passion necessary to play heated political opponents as well as endearing siblings — no easy feat. There were tears and sobs, along with rage and hatred. In such a tiny room, it was felt by all, heavily.

I left the brewery with an uncomfortable, uneasy feeling. Watching October Surprise isn’t easy, but it nonetheless says a lot about the often-toxic passions that lie behind political beliefs. As our election approaches, let’s hope there are no October surprises as bad as the one depicted here.