By Kent Straith

ROCHESTER HILLS, MI–If you’re short on time and can only read a single sentence of this review before the toaster pops up, leave with this: Native Gardens is the best production Meadowbrook Theatre has opened this season. It’s very funny, thought provoking, engaging, uncomfortable, and heartwarming all in a tight 90-minute package, and frequently all at the same time.

I guess that was two sentences.

Native Gardens, a fairly new play (2018) by acclaimed Mexican-American playwright Karen Zacarias is set in the twin backyards of an idyllic upper middle class neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Well…that is to say, the backyards are nearly twins. Frank and Virginia Butley are aging baby boomers nearing retirement after long careers spent in government service. Their yard is meticulously maintained with a garden lovingly tended by Frank, who seems to literally view his botanical creation as his favorite child, and who is only a week away from proudly entering it in a major horticultural contest.

The other property has a lot of potential, but is more run down inside and out. Pablo and Tania Del Valle are 30-ish, woke millennials. Pablo, is a Type A striver…the son of one of Chile’s wealthiest families who gave up his fortune to marry a poor woman for love, and is on the precipice of returning to a life of privilege on his own hard work…if only he can impress his boss this coming weekend. His enormously pregnant wife Tanya is an intellectual academic, working on her PhD dissertation and wanting nothing more than to terraform her fixer-upper backyard into a “native garden”…one that features only plants indigenous to the Potomac basin, and does not use any chemicals or pesticides. Tanya is a born and bred American, whose family has lived in the same area of what is now New Mexico since it was the original Mexico, and she is understandably aggrieved when people see her brown skin and black hair and assume she’s an immigrant.

Oh…and it turns out that one of the backyards is a tiny bit bigger than it should be. Bygones? Laugh about it? Well…

This play, in which every word is spoken by four characters with roughly equal sized parts, is about many things, and absolutely none of them is gardening. This story is about bias and prejudice, both real and imagined. It’s about ambition and its relationship to greed. It’s about what people owe to each other and the meaning of the word “neighbor.” Since you should definitely see this play, I am not going to spoil anything further about the plot, other than to say that one of the couples in this dispute is definitively in the right, but both are sympathetic. The audience wants them both to win and no one to lose, which is a triumph of the partnership between the actor and the scribe.

Recent Michigan graduate Stefania Gonzales plays her role to perfection. Her Tanya is, despite a hard life, a genuinely nice person who wants to be a good neighbor, a good mother, and a good steward of the Earth. I cannot speak with authority about whether or not Ms. Gonzales has ever been eight months pregnant, but she plays eight months pregnant with spot on accuracy. Her breathing, posture, balance, unsteadiness on her feet, and occasional desperation to sit down made me wonder momentarily if somehow, an actual pregnant woman had been cast in this role. Obviously, that wouldn’t work, but Gonzales is good enough at it to make you wonder. Paired with Michael De Souza as her decent, hard working husband Pablo (whose admirable range stretches from affably friendly to frighteningly manic), this is a couple you want to move in next to you and do well in life.

As Frank, frequent Meadowbrook performer Tobin Hissong is an anchor of the story. Hissong’s Frank tries so hard to be open and welcoming to people who are so unlike him in so many ways, and you can genuinely feel his hurt feelings when things go south. Truly stand-out is put in by Mary Robin Roth as Virginia. It was hours after the performance was over that I realized that, as Virginia, she seems to take some inspiration from Tony winning actress Jayne Houdyshell as Bunny Folger in “Only Murders In The Building”, who strangely enough, I discovered in researching this piece is an Oakland University graduate, and has performed in this very space. 

Theater is a team sport, and I want to point out truly excellent work by the design team of Christa Tausney (scenic design), Neil Koivu (lighting), and Krista Brown (costumes). The look of the houses and garden are incredibly realistic. Tania’s combination of prosthesis and costuming make her seem very pregnant. The massive oak tree in the Del Valle yard casts shadows in just the right places. The sun moves in the sky. This is truly as “outside” you can get inside, and in this business, the technical artists don’t get a curtain call, but in this case, they should.

Native Gardens is all around stellar work by everyone involved. I don’t do star ratings, but I can’t recommend it highly enough.

(Native Gardens is playing at Meadowbrook Theatre on the campus of Oakland University in Rochester now through April 14^th. Tickets are available at www.ticketmaster.com, www.mbtheatre.com, or by calling the Meadowbrook box office at 248-377-3300.)