'La Malinche' at Arizona Theatre Company Is A Bad Play Done Poorly. By Margaret Regan CORTEZ' CONQUEST OF Mexico was a tragedy of epic dimensions, an operatic catastrophe that saw the toppling of an elaborate native culture, the evisceration of an old religion, and the deaths of thousands upon thousands through slaughter and disease. It's a complex story still full of resonance to a world now almost 500 years removed from the original events of 1519 to 1521. The tale richly deserves to be told, but the Arizona Theatre Company's new version of the story is disastrous. In fact, La Malinche, a world premiere play by Carlos Morton, is a theatrical calamity that in its own small way mirrors the catastrophe of the original Conquest. The script is terrible, the acting by turns melodramatic and wooden, the direction confused. Perhaps worst of all, Morton has superimposed the Greek myth of Medea onto his Mexican subject, La Malinche, an Indian woman "given" to Cortez. Thus while he makes a kind of schoolboy attempt throughout the play to enlighten us as to the bitter historical record--inserting awkward soliloquies along the lines of "Here's what happened at the massacre at Cholula"--Morton himself deliberately distorts the historical record by converting La Malinche into a murderous Medea. The disappointment is even more keen because the story of La Malinche is so ripe for a modern interpretation. History tells us she was one of 20 young Indian women handed over to Cortez shortly after he arrived in Mexico. She had already been sold a number of times since her childhood, so she knew both her native language, Náhuatl and a Maya language. When Cortez discovered her linguistic talents, he depended upon her for translations and advice. She bore him a son, Martín, but eventually Cortez put her aside and took the 5-year-old Martín back to Spain. Cortez did marry twice, both times to Spaniards, and fathered 10 children, six out of wedlock. La Malinche is an ambivalent figure in modern Mexico. Some consider her a traitor, others honor her as the mother of the Mexican people. This is fascinating material, but the main message we get from Morton's retelling is "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." His Malinche, shallowly played by Karmín Murcelo, is desperately in love with Cortez. The play opens on the eve of Cortez's politically advantageous wedding to the bishop's niece, and La Malinche is in rage mode from the first scene. Like a country-western singer, she choruses again and again that her man has done her wrong. Like Medea, she plots revenge on her rival, the bride-to-be, and threatens her own child. Isn't that just like a woman? So jealous, so catty, so, well, murderous, when scorned? Never mind that history recorded no such plots or murders by La Malinche. In his weird aligning of La Malinche with Medea, Morton actually continues the assault of the Old World on the New, subsuming a real-life woman of Mexico into bankrupt Old World myths about women. Did it never occur to Morton that La Malinche might have been glad to be rid of the man she just might have considered her rapist? No, no, naturally she thinks of him as her husband. Naturally she's devastated that he's leaving her. Morton gives short shrift to the insights of feminism, pasting onto his soap opera a tiny speech by Malinche's servant Ciuacoatl (Dawnnie Mercado) denouncing the buying and selling of women. To make matters worse, in a play whose story depends so much on La Malinche's gifts of language, the playwright has a tin ear. Some of his dialogue is straight out of contemporary pop psychology utterly at odds with his 16th-century story. In one scene, Cortez (woodenly played by Christopher Michael Bauer) tells La Malinche, "I've loved you as much as I'm capable of loving any woman." What, he's a conquistador afraid to commit? The most poetic speech in the play, about broken spears lying in the plaza, is lifted directly from a Náhuatl lament about the Conquest. Nowhere, however, is this borrowing credited. La Llorona, the weeping woman of border myth, serves as a Greek chorus for this mess, directed by Abel Lopez. Wailing and lamenting in nearly every scene, Yolande Bavan delivers an exceptionally tedious performance. Richard Russell Ramos does his best as the stereotypically hypocritical bishop. Annabelle Nuñez of Borderlands has the thankless part of Doña Catalina, Cortez's prospective bride. Naturally, in this compendium of the trite, she's a fat and comical figure. In fact, apart from the mute Martín, played on alternate performances by Joseph and Patrick Concannon, the only actor to escape from this disaster with any dignity is Michael Miranda, also of Borderlands. He endows his deposed Aztec God with an impressive stage presence. Mercifully, he has not been made to speak any of Morton's lines. Inexplicably, the script won the 1995 National Hispanic Playwriting Contest, sponsored by both ATC and the Centro Cultural Mexicano de Phoenix. The production comes as a major disappointment right in the middle of one of ATC's best seasons so far. Of course, ATC has dressed up the play with its usual technical expertise, giving it dramatic lighting and music, and professional-looking sets. But never mind all those skulls lined up at the intersection of the Aztec pyramid and the Catholic cathedral on stage. Where the severed heads really ought to roll is over at ATC headquarters. La Malinche continues through Saturday, February 1, at The Alice Holsclaw Theatre in the Temple of Music and Art, 330 S. Scott Ave. Tickets are $18 to $27. Half-price rush tickets are available one hour before the performance. A free By Design panel discussion will meet at the theatre at 7 p.m. Monday, January 29. A free discussion follows the 2 o'clock matinee on Wednesday, January 29. For reservations call 622-2823. For more information call 884-4877.

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