The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity (review)

Spoilers ahoy!

Masculinity is a subject I often think on with a roll of my eyes, despite my own gender.  In fact, going on a diatribe about how our images and preconceptions of what the word even means forever remains possible.  Be warned.  Just sayin'

Then The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity appeared, from the Chance Theatre in Orange County, and there's no longer much need!  This play, set in the world of professional wrestling, pretty much says all I would desire.  Kristoffer Diaz crafted a fable on stage, a piece of ritual about a boy becoming a man, and how that process takes a long longer than one might imagine.  Many never really achieve it.  Most of those think they have, but remain frozen like an unarticulated action figure.  They are boys.  And remain boys--children.  Charming when young, tragic on so many levels in an adult.  Director Jeremy Aluma helped make that so utterly crystal, without ever saying it.  Not out loud, anyway.

Macedonio Guerra aka "Mace" (Steven Lihares) tells his story, directly to the audience, about a little boy's dream come true.  He became a professional wrestler.  Along the way, as he shares with us, we meet a variety of others--not least the title character (Duane Robinson), who as a handsome and charming and super-well-built figure is STAR of this show-within-a-show.  Despite the fact he can barely wrestle at all.  

At all.

But that is just part of the show business, right?  Just as other characters (played by Aaron McGee and Matt Takahashi) play their roles, and in the process are paid/used by the tycoon Everett K. Olson aka EKO (Jeff Lowe), a prima donna (or primo don maybe) who wants money and will do whatever it takes.  Into this mix, where Mace is happy and proud, enters Vigneschwar Paduar, aka VP (RJ Navarra Balde II) with the kind of special charisma Mace recognizes as worth GOLD.  He is correct.  

He is not correct, however, in his expectations of what will happen, not least what VP will do and what he'll refuse to do.  That journey is about so many masks being ripped off, torn away, left in the dust--sometimes literally--in the life of our hero.

It is awesome, and humbling, and beautifully sad to watch--and to take part within, since the audience in this show is definitely part of the show.  They play...the audience.  So obvious.  So meta.  So...disturbing.  Because watching Mace one by one lose all his excuses, all his illusions, all the reasons and justifications behind his life--it hurts.  Just as it is so powerful to watch, up to and past that glorious moment when four men forget he's the one who makes them good, when they gang up on him.  Yeah he wins.  But he loses.  And by losing, he wins.

And it hurts.

The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity plays Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 3 p.m. & 8 p.m., Sundays at 3 p.m. until October 23, 2022.  At the Chance Theater, 5522 East La Palma Avenue, Anaheim CA 92807