"A fizzy if somewhat formulaic two-character drama...Under Ruiz’s precise direction, their early interactions are calculatedly awkward...Saracho’s dialogue is witty rather than wincing. Less happily, she has a slightly lurid taste in narrative and a habit of asking characters to behave in certain ways not because their individual psychology demands it but to set up the next plot point...What’s left is a fairly predictable parable about trading ethnic solidarity for career opportunities."
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"If the premise sounds like a sitcom pitch, at least playwright Tanya Saracho supplies plenty of wit and attitude...Saracho has a keen ear for delusions or hypocrisies...Despite Saracho’s smart, fluid dialogue and the tight staging by Ruiz, 'Fade' suffers from two-hander structural monotony: She’s having a crisis, he shuts off the vacuum, and they talk. Saracho also makes Abel far more sympathetic than Lucia, who ends up (predictably) exploiting his 'authentic' experiences."
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"Funny, sharply written...This one-act two-hander begins in flash-card scenes that seem sitcom-ready, but Lucia and Eddie’s later duets have real punch and sting. The crisp staging by Jerry Ruiz rolls with the jagged pacing deftly. Dow and Martinez are terrific, his long, slow burn a foil to her staccato chatter and mixed-message body language. The ironically titled 'Fade' ends on a predictably bitter note that leaves unexplored the questions raised earlier about class versus genetics."
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"It’s a wheel-spinner of a play that sets out to address issues of culture, class and the price of ambition, but ends up being as contrived as a telenovela...Saracho seems confined here by the structure of a two-character one-act, especially on subjects she clearly knows well...There might have been something to emotionally engage us in director Jerry Ruiz’s production if Lucia wasn’t written and portrayed as so charmless, irritatingly garrulous and obviously artificial."
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"When so much of the American discussion of privilege focuses on race, Saracho bravely writes about class...Some confusing and all-too-easy moments...Luckily, Ruiz's well-staged production helps us suspend our disbelief over these storytelling chasms. His staging is tight and efficient without smothering the performances of the two actors...Saracho's teeming intelligence and emotional sensitivity more than compensate for the occasionally awkward contrivance of her script."
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"The action is as predictable as the most hackneyed network series; there's little to do but wait for the betrayal that will surely come...Jerry Ruiz's direction hasn't been able to solve these basic script problems, and it's possible that he has pushed the actress Annie Dow too far in the direction of making Lucia so annoying...Eddie Martinez fares much better as Abel, filling in the blanks of character so expertly that one comes to feel one knows him well."
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"Saracho's setup is plenty juicy, promising powerful recriminations, trenchant moralizing, and the kind of searing rhetoric on which August Wilson built his career. But the payoff, which consumes all but the first 10 minutes or so of this tedious 95-minute excursion, is so choked with clichés that most of Saracho's strong groundwork, and director Jerry Ruiz's attempts to rouse it from its natural torpor, plunges headfirst into the meaningless."
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"Despite punchy dialogue that effectively lands its laugh lines, there's no avoiding the predictability...Under Joel Ruiz's taut direction, and with a strong assist from his design team, the many short scenes have enough physical and visual energy to save 'Fade' from being too talky and static...Familiar as this narrative is, it's refreshing to have it play out for characters from a demographic usually seen in more stereotypical roles on stage and screen."
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