Theater review: ‘Tortilla Curtain’ a powerful, sprawling look at immigration America (Elizabeth Murillo) cares for Candido (Adam Saucedo) after he’s hit by a car on the streets of Los Angeles in The Western Stage’s production of “Tortilla Curtain.” When: 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays through Nov. 14Where: Studio Theater at Hartnell College, 411 Central Ave., SalinasTickets: $24-$26; Salinas >> The only bad thing about The Western Stage’s production of “Tortilla Curtain” is that you’re probably not going to be able to find tickets. The word is out about this powerful piece of theater, and with just two weekends remaining, you’ll need to act fast to scoop up any remaining seats or get on a stand-by list. The effort will be worth it.The play, adapted by Matthew Spangler from the 1995 novel by T.C. Boyle, provides a powerful answer to the question a lot of my non-theater friends ask: “What exactly does a director DO?” With “Tortilla Curtain,” director Lorenzo Aragon has taken the various elements available — lights, sound, set design, costumes, props, strong actors — and used them to harness the sprawling and diverse psychological and geographical settings of a novel, giving them life on a small, sparse set.

Certainly, Spangler’s adaptation begins that process, but it takes a director with experience, exceptional talent and a creative eye to execute the vision. The novel “Tortilla Curtain” was written in 1995 but sounds as if it could have been written last week. hellenbrand iron curtain replacement partsIt demonstrates the frustrating complexity of seemingly ageless immigration issues. eclipse zodiac blackout curtain panelWe’re even talking building a wall to keep “the Mexicans” out of a gated community.iclone curtainsThe action is set in motion when upper middle class, yuppie nature writer Delaney Mossbacher (Jeff McGrath) hits undocumented Mexican immigrant Candido Rincon (Adam J. Saucedo) with his car in Topanga Canyon outside of Los Angeles. jcpenney supreme thermal curtains

Though Candido is badly injured, he fears deportation if he goes to the hospital, so he simply accepts $20 from Delaney and the two part ways. Delaney returns to the safety of his gated community, Arroyo Blanco, while Candido joins his pregnant wife, America (Elizabeth Murillo), at a makeshift campsite on Topanga Creek.The juxtaposition of their vastly different circumstances serves as a catalyst for exploring where we stand as a nation on immigrants and immigration. winnie the pooh heffalump curtainsDelaney’s friend Jack Jardine (Carl Twisselman) says when referring to the proposed wall around Arroyo Blanco, “We wouldn’t need this wall if they got control of the border.” eclipse curtains suede thermabackJack also complains, “Our tax dollars are paying for some illegal immigrant to go to school.”

Faux liberal Delaney picks up the progressive side of the argument: “I just think everyone should have a chance to pursue a good life.” Does all this sound familiar? But it is a tribute to Boyle’s writing that he makes coherent points all around, never taking sides.The story offers up a number of twists and turns and an assortment of interesting characters. But the real treat here is marveling at director Aragon’s work.The set is simple — a number of overlapping platforms, a boulder and a “post office” wall with numerous flyers, all under the watchful eye of an American flag. But using all of the tools for making theater magic, Aragon, his technical team and his actors transform the intimate theater into, among other things, a racquetball court, a sushi bar, a creek bed, a grocery store, an upscale home, a post office parking lot and much more. But even more impressive is the way Aragon recreates, in all their powerful and frightening glory, a devastating fire, a massive and prolonged mudslide and the birth of a baby.

By deftly manipulating the tools available to him, Aragon allows the audience to unleash their own imaginations — the most powerful tool of all — to complete the pictures.There are productions where the technical and design teams do their jobs and help us to suspend our disbelief. But here, they go much further and become an integral part of the storytelling. Kudos go to scenic designer Jordan Janota, lighting designer John Englehorn, sound designer Taylor Wilson, costume designer Suzanne Mann and properties designer Dani Maupin. And we can’t forget the cast. Eight of the 11 actors deftly play 28 different roles, while McGrath, Saucedo and Murillo powerfully portray the three leads. Murillo, in particular, plumbs some serious emotional depths with disarming grace, honesty and simplicity.It’s no wonder tickets for the show are scarce. If you can finagle one, I can pretty much guarantee you’ll experience an evening that will stay with you long after you leave the theater.Mark Shilstone-Laurent is part of The Herald’s volunteer Critics Circle.

L.A. Weekly is determining the best L.A. novel ever by holding a tournament featuring 32 of our favorites in head-to-head matchups, until there's only one novel standing. For further reading:*Best L.A. Novel Ever: The Tournament Brackets*Best L.A. Novel Ever: More MatchupsSet in Topanga Canyon not too long after the L.A. riots, T.C. Boyle's The Tortilla Curtain is a novel about immigration. There are immigrants in the story, notably the Mexican couple Cándido and América Rincón, who camp by a creek below Spanish Mission style homes while looking for work, but you'll find recent arrivals in almost any contemporary Los Angeles novel. To say we live in a city of immigrants is to state the obvious. The Tortilla Curtain isn't just populated with people from elsewhere; you might say its main character is the actual social issue itself.Delany and Kyra Mossbacher live in Arroyo Blanco Estates, a community of annoying richies who, when they're not recycling Diet Coke cans, shopping for high-fiber bars or driving down the canyon road in Mercedes, are debating whether to build a big gate in front of their neighborhood.

It's just one of many walls discussed in the novel, all of which would be constructed by Mexicans, because that's the American way, güey. These walls come to symbolize the whole of the immigration debate, and the many struggles of the Rincón family after Delany hits Cándido with his car become swallowed up in the muddled, muddy torrent of that larger debate.After a fire destroys a property Kyra is trying to sell, her inner thoughts become all the more real for being so cliché: It was the Mexicans who'd done this. Goons with their hats turned backwards on their heads. Sneaking across the border, ruining the schools, gutting property values and freeloading on welfare, and as if that weren't enough, now they were burning everybody else out too. They were like the barbarians outside the gates of Rome, only they were already inside, polluting the creek and crapping in the woods, threatening people and spraying graffiti all over everything, and where was it going to end? Hector Tobar's The Tattooed Soldier, by contrast, is a novel about immigrants.

The book opens with Guatemalan intellectual Antonio Bernal and his Korean landlord struggling to understand each other's second-language English after the rent is long overdue, and it quickly propels itself into a tale of revenge for wrongs committed over 2,000 miles south of the border.After several nights sleeping in a lean-to on the palimpsest of Crown Hill, Bernal walks to MacArthur Park and discovers the Fort Bragg-trained Guatemalan solider who slew his wife and son years earlier in San Cristóbal. The son of a bitch is in Los Angeles. Guillermo Longoria, the titular solider, has lots of blood on his boots, so he doesn't recognize his compatriot and returns to his chess game, unaware a collision course has been plotted that will lead straight to the middle of the L.A. riots. Longoria is clearly the baddie in this scenario, but Tobar still instills a humanity in this former farm boy who was unwillingly conscripted and made into a man of slaughter.Both The Tortilla Curtain and The Tattooed Soldier are set around the time of the L.A. riots.

They both stare straight into the eyes of immigrants. They both describe the people and the terrain of particular parts of the city. So which is the better L.A. novel?The Tattooed Soldier, by a mudslide. Tobar's novel is heavy, but not heavy-handed. The immigrants of his Los Angeles bring their pasts with them, and those histories play out among the riots and the gangbangers of the 1990s. History creates the present, but the present looks a lot different from the past. There's plenty of social commentary in The Tattooed Soldier, but it's hidden beneath the lives of its antagonists, who came here and discovered a city not quite what they'd imagined: Years ago, when Antonio lived in Guatemala, he had an electric idea of Los Angeles. It was a place of vibrant promises, with suntanned women in bikinis and men carrying ice chests brimming with beer. It was a city of handsome, fit young people, all with bounce in their step. Long before he set foot in this country, Antonio felt that he knew California because he'd seen it come to life over and over again on his television set.