Hold the Mangos, Feel the Mangos, Inhale the Mangos: Don’t Eat The Mangos

Ricardo Pérez González’s Don’t Eat The Mangos at The Huntington Theatre’s Calderwood Pavilion is one of the best plays I have seen lately. That’s no easy feat given that I have seen so many great plays most from The Huntington’s programming. I imagine that there is a hierarchy of who will love Don’t Eat the Mangos most but there is also, within that, another subset who will find it the most painful. Somehow Don’t Eat the Mangos directed by Obie Award-winner David Mendizábal manages to present some very heavy topics in a lighthearted but respectful and honest way.

When you walk to your seat at the Calderwood Pavilion the stage and set is on full view. The set for Don’t Eat the Mangos is a home. It is 2019 in El Comandante, a neighbourhood in Carolina, Puerto Rico, just outside San Juan. You see the kitchen area, that leads to the laundry room on one side and the yard on the other. The attention to detail that scenic designer Tanya Orellana, lighting designer Cha See, and sound designer Jake Rodriguez give to the home is impressive. It seems to be a static set with those three areas. The play’s characters are three sisters, a mother and a husband and each role is rich with layers of which many will relate to within one or several of the characters and hopefully some very few will ever relate to. The acting was rich and within minutes you felt like you knew each of the sisters and mother so well, even if you don’t speak Spanish and missed some of the conversation. As the play goes on everything grows exponentially: the story, the set, the development of the plot. You will be fully immersed. We need to be fully immersed in art to help process so many things, especially right now, and Don’t Eat the Mangos does that exceptionally well.

I don’t have sisters, but I know the relationship between sisters can be intense in both negative and positive ways. Jessica Pimentel (Ismelda), Yesenia Iglesias (Yinoelle), and Evelyn Howe (Wicha) are incredible in their roles and the interactions between them is electric (sometimes shocking) at times and playful and tender at others. While Susanna Guzmán’s role as Mami and José Ramón Rosario’s role as Papi have less time on stage, they are central to the play and extremely difficult roles to play. The acting isn’t laboured or overworked it is only reflecting back that made me realise how hard these roles all are. Family is complicated and messy and this play deals with that in such a way without leaving you drained by the end of the play. Don’t Eat the Mangos peels back the layers to a family’s story without making you cry (okay I almost cried once). You don’t leave feeling heavy and sad though and once you know the full story that is hard to understand until you experience it. I highly recommend going to see it without reading the story first, but if you have some family related triggers that you may be concerned about then definitely make the experience feel safe and read up on it first.

No matter how close Don’t Eat the Mangos feels to your story whether you have been displaced, have your heart in Puerto Rico, have an ailing or aging parents, have sisters who judge, have childhood trauma and secrets, you will laugh not just a little and you will leave the show feeling lighter than when you came in.

Don’t Eat the Mangos, presented by The Huntington is playing at The Calderwood Pavilion in Boston’s South End through April 27th. Tickets can be purchased online or by phone at 617-266-0800 or in person at the Huntington Theatre or Calderwood Pavilion. Tickets start at $29 and select discounts apply as can be found here.

For more information on the fabulous cast and crew of Don’t Eat the Mangos read on here.