“Take this as a celebration!” exhorts the exuberant emcee at the top of “Lucha Teotl,” a raucous collaboration between the Chicago Latino Theater Alliance, the National Museum of Mexican Art and the Goodman Theatre. It’s almost impossible to do otherwise.
Christopher Llewyn Ramirez’ and Jeff Colangelo’s 100-minute odyssey through lucha libre — the Mexico-born sport/theater hybrid starring masked fighters with torrid backstories and bone-crunching moves — merges sport with theater with fabulous impact.
For the uninitiated, the lucha libre — which literally translates as “free wrestling” — is somewhat akin to the professional wrestling spectacles it inspired in the U.S.
Lucha libre also features plotlines worthy of a telenovela, the emotional drama as outsize as acrobatic moves that go by names like “the atomic drop,” “the clothesline” and “the curb-stomper.”
With “wrestling coordination” by Luis “Aski” Palomino, every chair-smashing, back-slamming take-down in “Lucha Teotl” looks and sounds like extreme physical punishment, even though it’s actually (mostly) explosive but (relatively) harmless physical theater.
But there is more than bruising stunt work at play. In “Lucha Teotl,” the fighters are stand-ins for Aztec gods. Their battles and their lore are inextricably intertwined with the Aztec culture that flourished in Mexico from roughly 1300 to the early 1500s, when the Indigenous empire was toppled by Spanish colonists.
Ramirez and Colangelo also co-direct the piece (featured as part of this year’s Destinos Festival), in which the gods battle for good and evil, honor and ego, while the ensemble pulls you in with nearly irresistible energy.
The Goodman’s roughly 350-seat Owen theater has been transformed into an intimate arena complete with wrestling ring for “Lucha Teotl,” the title referring both to the fictional wrestling organization producing the bouts and the Aztec concept of sacredness or divinity.
Set designer Anna Louizos puts the roped off ring at the base of a golden pyramid topped by a video screen. Looming above all is a moon-like orb representing an Aztec clock, a dazzle of symbols circling through it like tree rings.
As stories of various heroes and villains unfold, the audience is urged to boo, shriek, cheer and stomp their collective feet, the line between sport and theater shifting until it’s almost indiscernible. Part of the fun in “Lucha Teotl” is the response the ensemble is so skilled at eliciting: The cast turns the crowd into a community.
The matches revolve primarily around the moon deity Coyol (Paloma “Starr” Vargas) and Huitzi (Joey Ibanez), a newcomer to the ring hailing from a mythic family associated with the sun.
The plot follows Huitzi on a coming-of-age journey as he progresses from green newcomer ready to trip on his own hubris to seasoned vet who understands the value of humility and ancestral wisdom. As the growling “god of smoke and mirrors,” a triple-cast Palomino stalks Huitzi in the ring.
The intensely athletic ensemble also features Jamey Feshold and Molly Hernandez, each double-cast to create a pageant of arm-twisting, fist-foisting brawlers, the gods of frost and late summer among them.
As El Referee, Jean Claudio deploys the same scene-stealing balletic and (seemingly) face-stomping gymnastics as the wrestlers he frantically tries to keep in line. And as a duo of “comentaristas,” Ramon Camin and Rinska Carrasco deliver a wealth of comedy along with their commentary.
Costume designer Nicole Alvarez makes the most of the wrestlers’ shiney, Spandex apparel, each mask a unique statement on the character of its wearer.
Projection designers Rasean Davonte Johnson and Michael Salvatore Commendatore make excellent use of that screen perched atop the pyramid, its expanse showing the fighters in close-up, and at one point, following them as they tumble from the ring into the audience into a greenroom poker game, chips sent flying. As the bouts progress, lighting designer Jason Lynch sends eerie flickers of gleam and shadow over the Aztec clock, the inexorable passage of time impossible to escape.
“Lucha Teotl” could use some tightening, primarily at the beginning and the end. As the always-engaging Maestro de Ceremonia, Victor Marana is saddled with a formidable amount of table setting before the bouts begin, essentially charged with giving the audience a crash course in the history and culture of lucha libre and Aztec deities.
The script also stumbles slightly in the final wordless scenes. Ultimately, they provide a ultimately a beautiful and significant endnote, but the scene takes a few beats too long to get there, with several moments that feel like endings, but turn out to be repetitive pauses.
If you’re a fan of professional wrestling, “Lucha Teotl” is a no brainer. Ditto if you want a night out that’s equal parts high camp, bruising physicality and cultural celebration.
