Review of Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members, Yale Repertory Theatre
Do boards just generally have a bad name? To be “on the board”—doesn’t it suggest a level of integration into The System that may be met with envy, anger, maybe even revenge fantasies among underlings? Is there a relation between board-dom and boredom? Did you ever want to get up-close and personal with a “member of the board”? Or line ‘em up and shoot ‘em?
In Mara Vélez Meléndez’s Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members, now playing at Yale Repertory Theatre through May 17, Lolita (Christine Carmela), a trans Boricua woman packing her father’s gun, has come to NYC to off an entire board. Consisting of seven unelected climbers put in charge of “oversight, management and economic stability” for Puerto Rico, the board’s snazzy acronym spells P-R-O-M-E-S-A, or “promise.” As with other government entities we might think of, PROMESA seems primarily designed to promote the interests of those in power while shafting the general population. The board has managed Puerto Rico into economic chaos. Lolita thinks enough is enough.
Samora la Perdida, Christine Carmela in Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus
She takes the name of an actual woman, Lolita Lebron, who, with other Puerto Rican nationalists, opened fire on the US House of Representatives back in 1954, an act of retaliation, as they saw it, against the recent conversion of Puerto Rico into a US commonwealth. The play’s Lolita arrives at the Wall Street office of PROMESA fueled more by frustration than murderous intent, but her early mic drop moment puts the case clearly: “Do we hesitate to kill our leaders because we’re tired? Or . . . are we tired because we keep hesitating to kill our leaders?”
In the reception area of PROMESA, Lolita passes out from anxiety and comes to while the Receptionist (Samora la Perdida), hoping to help, realizes she’s armed. What follows is absurdist, dreamlike, and very, very much campy drag. Receptionist suggests a trial run at assassinating the board members—they are in possession of a binder with headshots and resumés for each of the seven—and before you can say “seven extravagant costume changes will be involved” Receptionist has taken on the task of enacting each board member as a fantasy drag alter ego.
It makes sense the way loose analogies sometimes do: political and economic self-determination—as for instance as an independent country with its own elected officials—is “like” self-determination in terms of non-binary gender constructions, see? At least both have to do with liberty, the kind that repressive regimes are apt to police or undermine or repress. And so, the fantasy board members that Receptionist conjures enact a sequence of problematic figures for whatever future Lolita is trying to imagine or implement.
I can’t say I quite “got” all seven as types or archetypes or even just as the fractious performers they are. And I have to admit that from time to time I found myself counting how many we’d met and how many more we still had to see—making the show feel a bit like having to get through a series of appointments. Next?
Samora la Perdida, Christine Carmela in Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus
The fabulous costumes by Arthur Wilson manage to keep one-upping the outrageousness (the last is truly mind-bending), and the songs and routines will land differently for different viewers (I probably laughed most outright at the initial reception that Artritis—a Reagan-era geriatric—met with, to the tune of “9 to 5”). My favorite board-member, though, for sheer entertainment, was Karlos Grace, the playboy, because he seemed to break most with the general technique on view. Samora la Perdida has a way with all these roles but their lip-synching was always theatrical in a very repetitive way (just giving “notes”). The board-persons that stood out most have some obvious cultural cachet—a judge, and, especially, a bishop.
Samora La Perdida, Christine Carmela (seated), in Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus
If you’re an enthusiast for drag shows—and I’ve seen more than a few in the precincts of theater—you will likely find much here to amuse. For me, though, there is an awkward disconnect between the fun of drag—even in the more subversive or openly political numbers I’ve seen—and the situation Lolita is supposedly in. In Javier Antonio González’s direction, the caricatures that Receptionist enacts are always courting audience response, the way a drag number does, while the interplay of board-member with Lolita (who gets to indulge in a variety of time-killing devices while waiting for the next costumed creature) sometimes becomes a whirlwind of half-begun statements, implied arguments and dissing—of each other, of each board-member’s failings, of the revolutionary pose in general. There’s very real friction between what Lolita wants and what the board-members may be said to stand for, but the best dialogue occurs between Lolita and Receptionist, who identifies as Nuyorican, as, for instance, when they try to hash out, as “colonized siblings,” what exactly Puerto Rican-ness could or should be. Receptionist’s viewpoints often seem about as mercurial as they come, while Lolita’s are very much thoughts in progress.
Christine Carmela, Samora la Perdida in Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus
Doaa Ouf’s projections and collage of surveillance screens do much to add visual interest, and pretty much any time the scenic designer at the Rep—here Patti Panyakaew—uses the space under the stage as part of the set we’re in for a visually stunning event. As Receptionist quips at one point “it’s an elaborate show” and it certainly is, an extravaganza of bits and routines and, yes, killings that are always diverting, as theater.
At one point Lolita offers notes to Receptionist about performance: “Be sublime, not performative.” Easier said than done. Later, Lolita tells Bishop Avid Silk, “I need reasonable conversation about statehood, liberation, what’s next.” Ummm…
Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members
By Mara Vélez Meléndez
Directed by Javier Antonio González
Scenic Designer: Patti Panyakaew; Costume Designer: Arthur Wilson; Lighting Designer: Yung-Hung Sung; Sound Designer: Joyce Ciesil; Projection Designer: Doaa Ouf; Hair Designer: Matthew Armentrout; Make Designer: Sarah Cimino; Choreographer: Javier Antonio González; Production Dramaturgs: Daria Kerschenbaum, Abraham E.S. Rebollo-Trujillo; Fight and Intimacy Directors: Kelsey Rainwater, Michael Rossmy; Vocal and Dialect Coach: Cynthia Santos DeCure; Stage Manager: Aura Michelle
Cast: Christine Carmela, Samora la Perdida, with Yan-Carlos Diaz, Flower Estefana Rios
Yale Repertory Theatre
April 25-May 17, 2025