no reaching the highest heaven

Wildcat File Photo Arizona Daily Wildcat Steven Pe#241;a plays Hurac‡n, a young Latino boy forced to return to Mexico during the Depression, in Childsplay's The Highest Heaven.

"Make me over in parables. So that I may not be easily seen or heard."

So says Jesus according to Mark and The Highest Heaven according to its playwright Jose Cruz Gonzales. A sort of parable befitting millennia-old scripture instead of the modern stage, this play is as distant from its audience in time as it is in storyline.

Broken down, the play goes something like this, according to the publicist: "[The Highest Heaven is] the heartfelt story of a young Latino boy named Huracan, one of thousands forced to return to Mexico during America's Depression. Abruptly alone and separated from his mother, Huracan follows the path of the monarch butterfly on a haunting search for his past and his future."

It is done in an ambitiously cinematic style that jumps in time as well as place, sometimes with the barest indications (the stage is fixed and Steven Pena, who plays Huracan, never changes his weedy clothes). The stage is perhaps the most expressive part of the play, especially compared to the lead character Huracan, who is as changeless in inflection as he is in clothes.

The "Student Activity Guide" for the play asks of its juvenile audience: "Did you have a favorite character?" And any critic, old or young, who is worth his or her salt would have to say El Negro, the old hobo haunted by his criminal past. Not only is El Negro, played by Ellen Benton, my favorite character, but the only character who plays to the audience, encouraging our sympathy.

She is otherwise an Oriental pearl in this lusterless play. The story's attempt to bring the audience along in feeling only goes as far as orienting us so that we face the stage. This is a feeble attempt considering the importance of the history and tragic results of this, a depression-era condition. Since the play is a tragedy, the expectation is that we be moved or flipped to think about larger issues. But the story resists when it should pull, speaks in abstractions when I would normally want to understand. The result is a whole lot of storytelling and very little to care about.

The Highest Heaven is playing through January 31 at the Tucson Center for the Performing Arts. Call Borderlands Theater at 622-2823 for more information.