Fat people are funny goes the cliche. In Boni D. Alvarez's Ruby, Tragically Rotund, they are that and a lot more -- including angry, defiant, bawdy, proud and, ultimately, victims.
Set in Sunnyvale, CA., the play, now in its world-premiere run at LATC, zeroes in on the Salazar family, Filipino-Americans with attitude. Mom (Edwina, played by Fran de Leon) is a former Miss Manila beauty-contest winner who is obsessed with looks and status. Stuck with a dim, nebbishy husband (Robert Almodovar), she lives vicariously through her daughter, Jemmalyn (played in deft drag by Marc Pelina) . Jemmalyn, who is slim and beautiful, plays the cello and has a good chance to win The Miss Sunnyvale beauty pageant, whose first prize is a college scholarship. Edwina, so sure Jemmalyn's looks and talent will carry the day, nearly has a conniption when her other daughter, Ruby (the effervescent Ellen D. Williams), announces that she, too, intends to compete in the pageant. Ruby, you see, is overweight. Rotund. Obese. And so are her three friends, Georgia, Ofa and Chiara, who chant, rap and prance through the play like a demented Greek chorus.
For years Edwina has criticized Ruby for being a fat slob (her words). She lashes into her every chance she gets, both in public and private. It's out of humiliation and defiance that Ruby decides to try and become a beauty queen.
The action that follows mixes satire, burlesquery, pathos and realism. First Ruby & Friends try to diet, jog and dance the weight off; but as one of them finally admits, "big girls running; it ain't natural." What is natural, though, is Ruby not only accepting herself for what she is, but being proud of it. Encouraged by her loving (and muscular) boyfriend (Kacy-Earl David), Ruby quits trying to hide or change her shape -- and is rewarded for her honesty, self-worth and sense of humor. First prize is hers, but only briefly, as her outraged mother uses her "influence"--euphemism for sexuality -- with one of the judges (Mark Doerr) to alter the outcome.
Ruby, Tragically Rotund then speeds to a shocking but understandable ending (once you realize that the mother-daughter conflict underpinning the play truly is a life-and-death struggle).
