The Beautiful Land I Seek
(La linda tierra que busco yo)

Play (2024)
by Matthew Barbot
Directed Armando Rivera
Teatro Chelsea
Chelsea Theatre Works
Chelsea, MA
October 31- November 22, 2025

With Nathaniel Jusiniano as Gris, Carlos Zalduondo as Oscar, Armando Rivera as Writer, Ashley L. Aldarondo, Alexander Crespo Rosaro II

Based on an historic event and set in 1950, Puerto Rican independence fighters Griselio “Gris” Torresola (Nathaniel Jusiniano) and Oscar Collazo (Carlos Zalduondo) are on a train from New York to Washington, DC, on a mission to assassinate President Harry Truman. While on the train, they encounter a host of characters, historic and otherwise, including Christopher Columbus, John Wilkes Booth, Maria from the musical West Side Story, and Alexander Hamilton from the musical Hamilton (2015). The pair of assassins, on a deadly mission, are visited by a series of mostly comedic vignettes by these characters, giving a sense of the combination of seriousness and irony that accompany the prospect of Puerto Rican independence over the decades. A few Hawaiian alohas are thrown in to bring to mind another United States “protectorate” with a long and complicated history. At the end, in a deeply self-referential turn, the so-called Writer of this play enters as a way of calling attention to the theatrical wall that separates the audience from political realities.

This energetic production brings together the highly animated assassin character, Gris – played with gusto and verve by Nathaniel Jusiniano – and the more quiet and withdrawn Oscar – played with complementary seriousness by Carlos Zalduondo, in an odyssey that is filled not only with tense energy, but with the wild and fantastical entrances of the many pantomimish characters. The author’s intent, no doubt, is to blend the absolute seriousness of the independence movement in Puerto Rico with the oddly cartoonish presentation of Puerto Rican culture as it makes itself known in the United States at large. The result is a collage, both narratively complex and tonally varied, that tries to bring forward the potent sense of mission of independence along with a sense of how that is undermined by all the cultural baggage that surrounds it.

The production is very energetic, with solid performances by Jusiniano and Zalduondo as the central characters, and by adept and entertaining clowning in one form or another in a series of role by the supporting cast of Ashley L. Aldarondo and Alexander Crespo Rosaro II. Funny lines abound. At one point, the pair of assassins finally ask the Maria character, after she invokes Chino’s name numerous times (for those who don’t remember, Chino is the assassin of Tony in West Side Story), who they heck Chino is, we get a sense of the riotous amusement that playwright Matthew Barbot brings to this script. Columbus and John Wilkes Booth are here portrayed pretty much as clowns; it does seem, though, a bit odd to make Booth a clown, given that the main narrative is focused on the quite serious matter of the assassination of Truman, another American president. This reflects a bit of tonal oddity in the play as a whole, which brings together utmost seriousness of purpose with extreme satire. In this sense, its fairly extreme combination of tones calls to mind some of Quentin Tarantino’s films, notably and iconically Pulp Fiction (1994), which revel in this combined modality of high drama and ridicule-laden spoofing.

The title of the script, of course, suggests the physical beauty of Puerto Rico itself, and the beauty of its people and its culture. More than that, however, it suggests that the beautiful land is actually a politically beautiful one as well, which does not, as yet, exist. The contemporary world is brought into the narrative to suggest that the challenge continues, and two unnamed characters from the present day fill the train compartment onstage in the final scene, suggesting that the work towards such political beauty continues.

– BADMan (aka Charles Munitz)