PCPA’s American Mariachi celebrates the everlasting power of music at Solvang Festival Theater

THE FANTASTIC FIVE: American Mariachi, the Pacific Conservatory Theatre’s (PCPA) new show at the Solvang Festival Theater, follows an all-girl mariachi group during the 1970s. Courtesy photo by Luis Escobar, Reflections Photography Studio 

Four string instruments and one brass are the keys to unlocking a woman’s fading memories in the Pacific Conservatory Theatre’s (PCPA) latest production, American Mariachi.

Suffering from Alzheimer’s, Amalia (played by Blanca Araceli) doesn’t remember her daughter, Lucha (Christen Celaya), or husband, Federico (Orlando Arriaga), but a mysterious song on an untitled vinyl record awakens something in her. She sings along to the mariachi tune one day in the family’s living room, reciting the lyrics by heart, to the surprise of Lucha and a family friend, Boli (Stephanie Roman).

Even more surprising though is Federico’s reaction to the incident. He angrily grabs the record hot off the spindle and tells Lucha not to play it again, but without explaining why. Lucha tries to grab the record back from her father and a game of tug of war between the two ensues. The record does not survive the scuffle, unfortunately. 

Boli—an ample source of levity throughout the show, thanks to Roman’s comic timing and playwright José Cruz González’s genuine, down-to-earth storytelling that masterfully balances playful humor and pensive drama—suggests gluing the fragmented pieces of the splintered record back together before Lucha calls Mino (Hugo Carbajal), the owner of a local music shop and an old friend of her parents. 

Mino isn’t able to repair the record with glue of course, but his phone call with Lucha sets off a chain of events that helps her uncover the truth about the mysterious mariachi song and why her mother and father had polar opposite reactions to the track.

Lucha also discovers that the record was one of a kind, without any copies in existence. Determined to re-create the song for her mother, Lucha proposes a bold solution: start a mariachi band of her own. Mino volunteers to teach the song to Lucha, who gathers an ensemble of musicians to join her. 

Boli, armed with a guitar, agrees to join and helps Lucha, who takes up violin, to recruit three more members: Isabel (Natalie Mara), a Catholic church choir dropout; Gabby (Gisela Feied), a contemporary worship band reject, and Soyla (Marilet Martinez); the big hair-sporting owner of a local beauty salon.

“The higher the hair, the closer to God,” one of Soyla’s patrons says at one point during a perm. 

Soyla, Gabby, and Isabel take up vihuela, guitarron, and trumpet, respectively, in Lucha’s new all-girl mariachi group—a concept unheard of during the 1970s, the decade in which American Mariachi is set. PCPA’s production of the show opened at the Marian Theater in Santa Maria in July and will begin showing at the Solvang Festival on Aug. 4.

Robert Ramirez, the director behind PCPA’s iteration, described American Mariachi as a story of female empowerment.  

“There is a distinctly feminist message in the play,” Ramirez wrote in the show’s program. “The young women in this play, Lucha and Boli, ignore the constraints of a male-dominated world and take charge of their lives and fates. 

“It is also, at its core, a very Chicano story; a story of defiance and of claiming a place in society where no is the standard response,” Ramirez added. “American Mariachi is a story about so many important things, including family, memory, and belonging.”

With energetic performances (from the cast during dialogue-driven scenes as well as the song segments, impressively played live on stage by the actors themselves), a spirited score, and magnetic set designs, American Mariachi is proof that PCPA continues to set the standard for live theater on the Central Coast.