North Bay theaters seem to be in the middle of a Karen Zacarías mini-festival with the Ross Valley Players well-received run of the playwright’s The Book Club Play coming to an end while Santa Rosa’s 6th Street Playhouse is in the middle of their run of Native Gardens. Both plays poke fun at suburban life while slyly introducing grander concepts beneath their comedic surface. Gardens is running on 6th Street’s Monroe Stage through June 16.
The play is set entirely in the backyards of two adjoining homes situated in a quiet Washington, DC suburb. Long-time residents Frank and Virginia Butley (Ron Smith and Sheila Lichirie) are delighted to welcome new neighbors Pablo and Tania Del Valle (Lorenzo Alviso and Lexus Fletcher) to the neighborhood.
Frank is a retired DC bureaucrat while Virginia is an engineer with a defense contractor. Pablo, a Chilean immigrant, is an attorney who’s just joined a prestigious firm while the very pregnant Tania, a New Mexican-American, is trying to finish a doctorate program. In an attempt to impress his new employers, Pablo has invited the entire firm to a barbecue at their new home. Fixing up their backyard means getting rid of a rickety old fence that separates the two properties. It also means disturbing Frank’s potentially prize-winning flower garden. Hell hath no fury like a gardener scorned. The neighborly dispute soon turns into an all-out war.
Zacarías uses the cartoonish dispute to address issues of immigration, racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia, and more and all in a breezy 85 minutes.
Director Beulah Vega has cast the show well. North Bay stage veterans Smith and Lichirie are solid as the older couple. Alviso, regularly seen in local musicals, does well as the ambitious, stressed-out counselor. Fletcher, a fairly recent addition to the local casting pool, is showing impressive growth as a performer.
Ben Roots clearly had fun with the sound design as scenes are bridged with Spanish versions of recognizable American songs.
The show’s set budget must have been spent on the houses’ facades, as the focal points of the dispute – the dilapidated chain link fence and the garden – are woefully inadequate. The chain-link fence clearly isn’t, and the flowers are represented by small, painted flats. The usually inventive Luca Catanzaro’s design really misses the mark here.
The play’s ending is a bit pat, but Native Garden’s amusing trip through suburbia is a good enough reason to get out of your yard and go to the theatre.
‘Native Gardens’ runs through June 16 on the Monroe Stage at 6th Street Playhouse, 52 W. Sixth Street, Santa Rosa. Thurs-Sat, 7:30pm; Sun, 2pm. $29–$45. 707.523.4185. 6thstreetplayhouse.com
Photos by Eric Chazankin
This review originally appeared in an edited version in the North Bay Bohemian.
North Bay Stage and Screen 
Hi Harry, I got to see the preview and checked out the program. All of the “foliage” (flowers & tree), if I recall correctly, is an homage to a particular mid-century American painting style. So they were purposefully painted flats instead of real plants.
Ross Valley Players had its own Zacarías run, as they produced “Native Gardens” last May, 2023.
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I figured it was a concept. It just didn’t work for me.
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