Mateo and his adoptive mother Diane are on a road trip from Ohio to San Diego. Mateo wants to arrive at the hospital where he was born, exactly on his 15th birthday, to see if he can get information on the birth mother who gave him up there.
It’s a quest often seen on stage and in film, but playwright Jordan Ramirez Puckett has developed that theme so delicately, so beautifully in “A Driving Beat,” and has created such a believable and endearing character in Mateo, it feels completely fresh.
Mateo also wants to learn to drive, and the intensity of that need is strong.
Periodically during the four-day ride, Mateo, an inspired hip-hop artist, captures a syncopated beat from fiddling through static on the car radio, propelling him into an almost trance-like spoken-word frenzy.
Thus the title of this rolling world premiere at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley (where it was developed, in collaboration with Flint Repertory Theatre in Michigan) has multiple meanings.
Puckett’s script has multiple threads as well, all of which are delicately captured by an excellent cast directed by Jeffrey Lo.
How a “brown” kid and a white mother make their way through their particular journey is complex but utterly authentic, perhaps captured most theatrically when they’re stopped by border patrol. “White woman, brown kid driving through Texas . . . what did you expect?” says Mateo to his mother.
The nuances of their relationship are revealed at a natural pace in the hour-and-a- half play, and the road trip concludes in a way that’s unpredictable but feels truthful for these two characters, each on a personal journey, both taking comfort in each other, thankfully without any hint of sentimentality.
As Diane, Lee Ann Payne is a sympathetic and nurturing figure, but her role is a bit underwritten. A lesbian and a schoolteacher, she has been grieving the death of her partner—with whom she adopted Mateo—for more than a decade. She changes as the play moves on, but not necessarily in expected ways—Puckett is a subtle writer—and that’s a good thing, but I’d have welcomed a chance to get to know her more deeply.
Livia Gomes Demarchi is fine in several small, clearly delineated roles.
But “A Driving Beat” is mainly a play about Mateo, and Jon Viktor Corpuz is so good—even when he’s just silently listening to his mother–that it’s hard to imagine the play without him. Everything he says and does, including fevered moments when he pops out of his car seat like a Jack in the Box and explodes into frenzied, expressive hip-hop (the program lists Carlos Aguirre as beat maker), seems to emerge from someplace deep and authentic.
It’s also hard to imagine the play without the sure hand of director Lo. To make a long road trip work onstage, with just two chairs for car seats and a few other minor set pieces (scenic design by Christopher Fitzer), and to bring the playwright’s text to such clarity—to make us feel so keenly Mateo’s longing and distress—is indeed a gift for an audience.
TheatreWorks Silicon Valley’s “A Driving Beat” continues through Nov. 23 on the SecondStage, Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro St., Mountain View. Tickets are $49-$79 at theatreworks.org.