'LOS ILLEGALS' TAKES ON MAJOR ISSUE.

Byline: Evan Henerson

Theater Critic

Faith has given way to justice. New leadership steps in just in time to usher in a new cycle of plays involving new, untapped communities and -- this being the Cornerstone Theater Company we're talking about -- new and original ways of thinking.

So why does this cycle kickoff, titled "Los Illegals," seem ... how to put this ... kind of familiar?

It may have to do with the fact that frequent company director Shishir Kurup is at the helm or that the Cornerstone and its members will, by necessity, produce entertainment with a certain feel to it.

And it's difficult to gripe over the majority of what Cornerstone does and how it does it. The once road-based theater troupe -- which now journeys into diverse L.A. communities to craft its original plays -- set the creative bar impossibly high with its Faith Based Theater cycle. With the Justice Cycle, new artistic director Michael John Garces -- taking over from founding director Bill Rauch -- is looking to examine the effect of laws on communities and current events.

So it is that "Los Illegals" -- performed with so much Spanish that the company might have figured out a way to project super-titles -- looks at a community of unionized day laborers based at a mega-chain hardware store called Giant and the unaffiliated workers who stake out an adjacent street corner.

The workers and the hardware store administrators come under fire after a customer accuses a day laborer of assault and robbery. While immigrant activists and legal aid look to find the truth and douse the fire before it comes a four-alarm conflagration (or riot), a citizen group protests over the illegals -- who they perceive to be stealing jobs from legitimate Americans workers.

Outside the compound, a worker's brother named Javier (played by Andres Munar) tracks across the desert trying to get to L.A. And Guatemalan girl Rosenda (Blanca Gutierrez, her lovely performance delivered almost entirely on film projected on the back of a truck) takes a similar journey in the bed of a refrigerated vegetable truck. Lope de Vega's play "Fuente Ovejuna" is "Los Illegals' " point of departure.

With 25 actors, nearly 30 characters and four locations, playwright Garces and director Kurup have perhaps bitten off more than they can reasonably expect an audience to digest.

Given the work's sheer volume and Kurup's less-than-epic-scale treatment of this tale, character shading often bows to declamation. Many an individual exists to state a position ("I just want to work." "I deserve to eat, too!") and then defend or martyr himself to the sentiment.

Rosenda and Javier -- as strong as the performers' work is -- are thinly drawn characters. Others seem to be largely passing through "Los Illegals": Lalo (Adrian Guzman) who provokes a security guard, is arrested and disappears; the same is true even for Giant manager George (Peter Howard), a rare Caucasian character.

Kurup's staging amid the technical demands of the site is plenty dynamic. Set designer Nephelie Andonyadis has established a portion of the Armory Northwest's parking lot as a semi-enclosed compound. Audiences -- and actors -- sit at benches piled with checkerboards and U.S. citizenship brochures.

The production's site-specific aura certainly gets it right. Would that Garces and Kurup had found a tighter, more-focused dramatic story rather than a discussion masquerading ever so slightly as narrative.

Evan Henerson, [phone]

[e-mail]

LOS ILLEGALS - Three stars

Where: Cornerstone Theater Company at the Armory Northwest, 965 N. Fair Oaks Ave., Pasadena.

When: 8 p.m. Thursday through Sunday; through June 24.

Tickets: $20. (213) 613-170, Ext. 33. www.CornerstoneTheater.org.

In a nutshell: Ambitiously, a new Cornerstone Theater Company cycle begins.

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Photo:

Andres Munar and Blanca Gutierrez deliver strong performances in the Cornerstone Theater Company production of "Los Illegals."