What can I say about Chimichangas and Zoloft that you haven’t probably already guessed from the title? Even if Fernanda Coppel’s Mexican-American family drama did not literally begin with a fart, it would still be a bit of a stinker from the get-go. Blunt, clunky scenes alternate with self-conscious monologues; amid the earnest machinations of the plot, the characters barely scrounge a moment of truth.
Teddy Cañez and Alfredo Narciso play dads on the down low, who are sex-dating and datedly confused about how a gay relationship might work. (“I mean, who’s supposed to pay for dinner?” asks one.) Carmen Zilles and Xochitl Romero are their teenage daughters, who are beginning to explore the world of sex themselves. And Zabryna Guevara is Sonia, the depressed mother of one of them and inexplicable hero of the other, who has run away after her 40th birthday and taken with her Coppel’s belabored lyrical dialogue, which rides the Nilo Cruz ship into the rocks.
Consider this unfortunate tangle of flourishes: “Jackie’s face, like a winter sunset, quickly faded from confused—to regrettable—to mortified shrieks of tears.” Right; yes. Confused, regrettable, then fading to shrieks: just like a winter sunset. This was greenlit by Atlantic Theater Company? Pass the Zoloft, please.—Adam Feldman