Marisol

by José Rivera

Marisol Perez, a young Latina, is a copy editor for a Manhattan publisher. Although she has elevated herself into the white collar class, she continues to live alone in the dangerous Bronx neighborhood of her childhood. As the play begins, Marisol narrowly escapes a vicious attack by a golf-club-wielding madman while traveling home on the subway. Later that evening Marisol is visited by her guardian angel, who informs her that she can no longer serve as Marisol's protector because she has been called to join the revolution already in progress against an old and senile God who is dying and "taking the rest of the universe with him." The war in heaven spills over into New York City, reducing it to a smoldering urban wasteland where giant fires send noxious smoke to darken the skies, where the moon has not been seen in months, where the food has been turned to salt, and where water no longer seeks its level. Alone, without her protector, Marisol begins a nightmare journey into this new war zone. She finds herself on the streets, homeless, where her many encounters include a woman beaten for exceeding her credit limit and a homeless burn victim in a wheelchair looking for his lost skin. With the apocalypse well under way, the angels have traded in their wings for Uzis and wear leather motorcycle jackets and fatigues. As the action builds to a crescendo, the masses of homeless and displaced people join the angels in the war to save the universe.

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Drama, Read For School, School, Dystopia, College

60 pages, Acting

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

José Rivera is a recipient of two Obie Awards for playwriting for Marisol and References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot, which were both produced by The Public Theater in New York. His plays, Cloud Tectonics (Playwrights Horizons and Goodman Theatre), Boleros for the Disenchanted (Yale Repertory Theatre and Goodman Theatre), Sueño (Manhattan Class Company), Sonnets for an Old Century (The Barrow Group), School of the Americas (The Public Theater), Massacre (Sing to Your Children) (Rattlestick and Goodman Theatre), Brainpeople (ACT, San Francisco), Adoration of the Old Woman (INTAR) and The House of Ramon Iglesia (Ensemble Studio Theatre), have been produced across the country and around the world. He is currently working on The Last Book of Homer, Scream for the Lost Romantics, and The Gamma Forest. Mr. Rivera’s screenplay for The Motorcycle Diaries was nominated for a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar in 2005. His screenplay based on Jack Kerouac’s On the Road premiered at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival and was distributed nationally in the winter of 2013. His film Trade was the first film to premiere at the United Nations. Television projects in the works include an untitled HBO pilot, co-written and produced by Tom Hanks, as well as a 10-hour series for HBO tentatively known as Latino Roots. Celestina, based on his play Cloud Tectonics, will mark his debut as a feature film director. He is the writer/director of the short film Lizzy and has recently completed his first novel, Love Makes the City Crumble. His next film project will be a biography of famed baseball player Roberto Clemente for Legendary Films.

Reviews

[mar]

this play is so weird and so good

[Katerina Siapatori · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not particularly fond of absurdish drama nor did I entirely understand what the play is about. But for me it's certainly one of those works that you struggle to grasp and that you enjoy whatsoever, comprehension not being a deterrent for that.

[king bitchard 💜 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nothing inspires me like angels. The carnage, the glory, the inspiration they wreak. I’m not certain if this play is hopeful or hopeless. It’s meticulous and unhinged. Certain aspects of it seem like an abstract painting; different people will see different things.

[Elena Mey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Masterpiece.

[Tommy Tomlin · Rating 2 out of 5]

14

[Claire · Rating 1 out of 5]

I sometimes get stress dream where I try and solve an unsolvable problem. It looks and feels exactly like this, to the point where I had a headache after reading it and one of my stress dreams that night. I understand the whole disjointed and underlying messages, but I just couldn’t see it as something other than a complete train wreck.

This play is definitely not my favorite, I personally think it is one of the worst pieces of literature I have read. I get what the author was trying to do, but I just don’t think it worked at all. The writing is super choppy (SUPER STIFF, I can’t stress enough), and there’s some sentences that have grammatical errors (I’m sure on purpose but still). There are some plot hole that just don’t make sense, even if the play isn’t supposed to make sense.

[Vatikanska Milosnica · Rating 5 out of 5]

this irritated me big time at first but by the end it all uncannily came together; the imagery (and especially in the second part) was extremely well chosen, potent, and resonant

this is a rare example of a 'socially engaged' drama i could stomach — because it also possesses theatrical and visual intelligence in spades. hordes of interchangeable leftist playwrights ought to take their notes from this

[Aaron Piccirillo · Rating 3 out of 5]

“War?”

umm soo yeah this show was weird and i honestly don’t even know what really happened because i felt like there was no story or meaning to anything going on. it was an interesting read and probably is a really interesting show to see but i wish there was more of a point of view with some things because it didn’t really go anywhere. it was a cool concept but i just feel like there wasn’t a lot of follow through with it because i didn’t know what the playwright was trying to say with this story. but i did appreciate the elements of magical realism and theatre of the absurd so that was fun.

[Ronni]

Oh you know, just some light reading (this is most definitely sarcasm; that was wild.)

[mitzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

the first latin american playwright ive read - i actually really loved it ! kinda crazy tho ? can see the elements of magical realism in this

[Madelein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely bonkers in a great way.
I loved this play, post-apocalyptic and angelic, absurd and violent.

[alysa · Rating 4 out of 5]

i love when latinos get surreal

[Ash · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful and amazing and I need to read it again because I don’t understand it

https://pin.it/7L07MG1

[Helen Sebesta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just saw a live production at Trinity Conservatory Theater in Providence and I think the play is fascinating. It keeps one thinking long after the last scene. It is definitely part of Theater of the Absurd, but the themes in the play are not really so absurd. The characters abound in real life and they make the play quite accessible. I saw Lenny, when he demanded that he control Marisol and she could have his baby, as a God figure, or perhaps a symbol of the Catholic church in that he said she wouldn't need to take responsibility anymore. He would decide what was good for her.
The title and the title character seem significant: Mary plus sun or "loneliness" and the many and varied, obvious, references in the play to the Catholic church. The man in the wheelchair who had been burned and was looking for his skin, at times seemed to be treated by Marisol as a Christ figure. The woman in the fur coat who was lost because she lost her credit rating, seems to represent all of us who ignore the poor, the homeless, and the forgotten members of our society. I'm still thinking about the guardian angels!
The humor in this play kept it vital and accessible to the audience. I won't ruin that part by discussing it.

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm conflicted. The first act and the beginning of the second act are some of the most excitingly unique dramatic literature I've ever read. The majority of Marisol depicts a surreal, haunting dystopia guaranteed to get under your skin. The characters are striking, the dialogue is unsettling, and the imagery is poignant.

Then, there's a very specific moment when the play tumbles into seeming nonsense up until the ending. Other reviews on here mention that it's effective as a work of absurdism, but I disagree. I've read absurdist plays and Marisol isn't one. Everything before that specific moment is highly bizarre, yes, but still grounded enough in its own reality to work as a logical story. Another genre people tend to prescribe to this play is magical realism which is more fitting, but those elements too dissolve into nonsense in the ending.

Does the ridiculous end stretch invalidate the incredible story that precedes it? I can't answer that for sure, but I do know that I wish it had gone differently.

(3.5 stars)

[Maddi Moran · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really potent play.


Speaks to themes of religion, and no being is perfect. It asks the question

“What Happens when our guardian angels leave us?”

“If God is real, why do horrible things happen?”

Despite there being ancient beings, why are humans left to feel like “raw food” to society and the world?

Is peace worth it if war will lead to a better world? Showing angels going to war is a contradiction, yet begs the question “why fight? What does this accomplish?”

[Christina Hopp · Rating 2 out of 5]

i feel like i missed some messages in here that would make me appreciate it more. i normally have trouble connecting to absurd drama so maybe it's just not for me. i found the world created to be hopeless and so i hated the feeling of dread i had whenever i read it. i'd love to see this on the stage to be able to appreciate the images they were trying to show. but it was so chaotic that i couldn't see it while reading.

[Robyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

There is WAY too much going on in this play: Magical realism, science fiction, apocalypse, Nazism, feminism, race relations, heteronormative criticism, religion, capitalism, materialism, etc., etc.

WTF did I just read?

[Spencer Fancutt · Rating 1 out of 5]

Picked this up in the uni shop, thinking I hadn't read any drama in a while. I was expecting more than a WTF. There is a guardian angel with an Uzi, and a skinhead neo-nazi running around setting fire to homeless people. In spite of this, I didn't enjoy it at all.

[Jillian · Rating 1 out of 5]

what the everloving fuck was that

[Corey Wozniak · Rating 4 out of 5]

😇😇😇😇😇😇😇🤪🤪🤪🤪🤯

[Emily Rose H · Rating 3 out of 5]

I must have lost the message of this play because I was lost from the start.
Edit* After a re-look at the play, it has a really interesting story it's just incredibly complicated. 2.75 stars

[Paul Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Literary theorist, Brian McHale, observed that the 1990s were a highpoint for fiction involving angels. I am increasingly realizing how correct he was, what with texts including Angels In America (1990), Touched by An Angel (1994-2003), City of Angels (1996), and more. There were also books featuring angels without mentioning them in their titles, such as Good Omens (1989) and James K. Morrow’s biting satires, including Only Begotten Daughter and Towing Jehovah. And there was the ironic character of Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer who later got a show of his own. This was, I suspect, both an outgrowth of and reaction to the intense evangelical movement that crystalized around Ronald Regan and Margaret Thatcher, at least in the English-speaking world. (Now I’m curious if other countries experienced a surge in angel-infused fiction.)

Marisol is a part of this overall moment, specifically within the satirical tradition with Morrow, Pratchett and Gaiman, Kushner, and others, in which angels are not gentle and benevolent.

Though the play is a bit dated (you can readily sense how pre-9/11 it is in its details), it does offer interesting insights and speaks to our current era. I like how it interrogates issues that speak to today (e.g. the uncomfortable union between conservatism and Neo-Nazism; the futility of the “American Dream” for certain people; the rampant but ignored crime and madness in urban spaces that gets hidden behind the mentality of “out of sight, out of mind,” and so forth). The play is clever in how it deploys its iconography, and while surreal, never goes too far with that surrealism.

Just the same, I must confess, when it comes to plays, I tend to mostly value verisimilitude over surrealism. None of the characters in this play is an actual person – they’re metonymic metaphors for ideas and groups of people. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but when I’m reading a play, that’s difficult to track. I would benefit from seeing a production of this play, but it would need to be a particularly strong cast, because this play could easily be done poorly.

Still, what’s good in this play is sufficiently solid, and I could see myself teaching it some day.

[Aaron Thomas]

I'm really baffled by readers' descriptions of this play as "absurd" or even as "magic realism". I do not understand these descriptions one bit. Marisol is a nightmare vision of New York City - an urban realm of violence, racism, and madness. This is, perhaps, surreal, and some of the play's imagery is shocking and poetic, but this is not the world of magic that Marquez wrote. This is a Nuyorican vision of state torture, lack of government care, and casual white supremacy. It's a play about the apocalypse (references to the millennium abound) and the anthropocene (the oceans in this play are salting the earth). It is a theatrical version of Pedro Pietri's "Puerto Rican Obituary" – add Marisol to Pietri's list of names: Juan / Miguel / Milagros / Olga / Manuel / All died yesterday today / and will die again tomorrow / passing their bill collectors / on to the next of kin / All died / waiting for the garden of eden / to open up again / under a new management...

[Bee ♡ · Rating 5 out of 5]

i had to write a paper on this play, & i said it best there: "I want to read this play again forever. I want it framed up on my wall. It’s horrible, but it’s unashamed. This play has it all: a heavenly war, early 2000s paranormal romance vibes, a dying God, an undefined sapphic romance, Nazis, m-preg, magical realism, commentary on our own significance in an uncaring universe, m-preg a second time, excessive violence, undertones that are simultaneously homoerotic and homophobic, the power of people as a collective, a lot of violence with one singular golf club, sexually promiscuous angels, live birth on stage, Jimi Hendrix, I could go on. Truly, something in here for everyone."

easiest five stars i've ever given

[leah hohauser · Rating 4 out of 5]

Destroy everything, dismantle everything, burn it down and fight is the only way to truly fix the sickness we’ve created.

Which way is up? Who do you trust? What is good and bad? Who is responsible? What are you even looking for?

Another batshit magical realism brilliant play ahead of its time.

“Salt is in the food and mythology of cultures old and new. Ancient writers believed that angels in Heaven turned into salt when they died. Popular mythology holds that during the Fall of Sagan, angels who were killed in battle fell into the primordial ocean, which was then fresh water. Today, the oceans are salted by the decomposed bodies of fallen angels…”

“He can stand very, very still for a very long time.”

[Harley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Note: I read this for a class, and therefore was introduced to it in an academic context. I did approach it from a sound designer's perspective.

An absolutely beautiful contemporary piece. It felt so timeless that I assumed it was much more recent than it is. It feels so authentic, so truthful, and yet so sculpted. Each character feels fully formed from their first introduction and only ever stray when they are introduced to the alternate reality. I would love to be in any way involved in or see a production of Marisol.

[Nick K · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a little more absurd than anticipated and magical realism and myself have a very tricky relationship but overall I found this to be an interesting play. I might be wrong, but I interpreted this play's message to be - when creating something new and wonderful, what you have needs to be destroyed. And, even if a revolution is what you want, the change is still scary. I'm still not quite sure what each individual character represents but it didn't ruin it for me. I'd love to see it done.

[Patrick Brandzen · Rating 1 out of 5]

This play tries to be taken seriously and it just keeps getting worse the more you read. Think movies like Thankskilling, Birdemic, Zombeavers, etc, but if they were written to be received as serious movies and were even more ridiculous. I see what the author was trying to do, the underlying themes, etc, but it's just a dumpster fire.

This is the worst thing I have ever read in my entire life. Now I have to write a serious 4-5 page paper on it.

[Lizzie · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is so much symbolism in this book, but for me at least, none of it really adds up. Every interpretation I'm able to come up with is ignoring at least a few major parts of the play. It just doesn't make sense. But maybe it isn't supposed to. Whatever the case with this one, I know it's one I'm not going to be able to stop thinking about for a while.