“Native Gardens” has been around for a decade but seems even more potent now. It’s a canny, funny allegory of international relations and political differences where the battlefield is a fence separating two backyard gardens in Washington, D.C.
The show makes for a bright, colorful, outdoorsy respite between two decidedly darker shows at Hartford Stage: “Death of a Salesman” last month and “Sweeney Todd”, a co-production with TheaterWorks Hartford, coming up in June.
In the play, Pablo and Tania del Valle — he’s a lawyer hoping to make partner in his firm, she’s finishing her graduate dissertation and is pregnant — move in next door to the Butleys, who’ve lived there for decades. Virginia Butley is an engineer who has overcome male chauvinism in her career and Frank is retired from a federal agency. The couples are from different generations and different cultural attitudes.
In a scene that’s reminiscent of a Lenny Bruce routine about a white man and a Black man at a cocktail party, Virginia wrongly assumes that the del Valles are Mexican when in fact Pablo is Chilean and Tania was born in New Mexico. Awkward assumptions soon give way to actual disagreements: Frank, an avid gardener who’s obsessed with winning a neighborhood gardening contest, grows exotic plants and uses heavy fertilizers and pesticides, while Tania has her heart set on cultivating a natural spread of organically grown plants native to the area.
T Charles Erickson
From left: Alina Collins Maldonado, Bradley Tejeda and Greg Wood in “Native Gardens” at Hartford Stage through May 10. (T Charles Erickson)
It all comes to a head when a border issue comes to bear. A fence between the Butley and del Valle’s yards had been improperly placed years earlier, and Frank Butley has grown much of his garden along that two-foot strip that rightfully belongs to the del Valles. The discovery is made just as the del Valles need to rebuild the fence, in its proper place, prior to an important garden party, and days before Butley’s garden is to be judged for the local competition.
Calm discussions erupt into open threats of attack and retaliation. The neighbors argue over the definition of “weed” and whether introducing plants from other regions to a garden represents a pro-immigration attitude or a colonialist takeover.
“Native Gardens” is a smart, politically savvy comedy that’s about something much more than funny people saying funny things. It leads somewhere. It understands that action is as powerful as words, and provides plenty of both. It doesn’t take itself seriously. Most importantly, for a play that could easily become about mutually assured destruction, it’s not a bringdown. However nasty and spiteful things get between the Butleys and the del Valles, there’s always the sense that a détente may still be possible.
Considering how justifiably offended all the characters get when they are stereotyped by the others, for the sake of its plot and its comic interplay “Native Gardens” also must buy into a lot of social and cultural clichés, like the staid, old set-in-their ways couple and the younger ecologically minded generation. It’s up to the actors to smooth the edges and bring depth and vitality.
T Charles Erickson
The del Valle couple and the offending fence of their neighbors the Butleys in “Native Gardens” at Hartford Stage. (T Charles Erickson)
Bradley Tejeda, a 2016 graduate of the Yale School of Drama, and Alina Collins Maldonado, whose playbill bio notes that she holds bachelors’ degrees in both theater and gender and women’s studies, an ideal combo for this show, are a believably loving and idealistic young couple. Judith Lightfoot Clarke and Greg Wood carry themselves with peevish authority as the Butley, oozing entitlement.
Director Nicole A. Watson, who did her undergraduate degree in history at Yale, uses the divided stage area artfully, keeping the actors moving through the open backyard areas in amusing ways. The style is close to other grand comedies done at Hartford Stage in recent years, from “Laughs in Spanish” to “The Cottage,” but those happened mostly inside, with slamming doors and pratfalls down staircases. Seeing a knockabout comedy set outdoors is a whole different barrel of laughs.
D.C. playwright talks about political metaphors in her comedy ‘Native Gardens’ at Hartford Stage
This is at least the fourth production of “Native Gardens” in Connecticut. Ivoryton Playhouse did it in 2022, The Little Theater of Manchester in 2024 and Westport Country Playhouse last year. Westport’s production was quite similar to Hartford’s, but the differences are illuminating. The scenic designer of the Hartford production, Lawrence E. Moten III, chose to exaggerate the disparity between the Butley’s immaculately kept house and garden and the long-abandoned one that the del Valles have just bought. Another neat design touch is the preshow music, which features instrumental soft-rock salsa arrangements of cheesy pop hits like “Take On Me” and “Tiny Dancer.”
In a culminating comic battle with garden implements, Westport’s production came off as safe slapstick compared with Hartford’s, which, while still funny, definitely has a more aggressive edge. Since one of the metaphorical aspects of the script concerns how swiftly conflicts can flare up from small disagreements into major knock-down-drag-out fights, showing the violence and bared-teeth snarling is appropriate, a lighter touch could work, too.
T Charles Erickson
The tense neighbors of “Native Gardens” in better times. From left: Greg Wood as Frank Butley, Alina Collins Maldonado as Tania del Valle, Bradley Tejeda as Pablo del Valle and Judith Lightfoot Clarke as Virginia Butley. (T Charles Erickson)
The other big difference with Westport has to do with a particularly clever element of Zacarías’ script. Just when you start to worry that 90 minutes of banter among just four characters will get tiring after a while, up turn three amusing garden workers. Played here by Carla Astudillo-Fisher, Mia “Mimi” Lozada and Aidan Ramirez, these background characters never speak, just react with alarmed or bemused expression and through those reactions demonstrate how chaotic things are getting. The workers get ordered to start jobs, stop jobs, ignore jobs and are other things that turn them into ping pong balls, with the Butleys and the del Valles as the paddles. This silent trio is meant to provide big comic relief, pbut there are varying degrees of how broad that comedy can get. In the Westport rendition, the garden workers essentially did their jobs in a funny way. At Hartford Stage, they break into silly dances, clomp through the garden and leave a much bigger mark on the play, one that threatens to throw off the balance of “Native Gardens” as grandly as that misbegotten property line.
However it’s interpreted, “Native Gardens” remains a genuine crowdpleaser that makes a real point. There’s a segment of the audience that practically swoons when good news befalls some of the cast at the end of the play. These are endearing characters in a believably, crazily fraught situation that may seem straight out of a sitcom (the 1970s British one “The Good Life” aka “Good Neighbors” springs to mind) but would also not be out of place in an international relations or political theory class. It delivers a message of diplomacy with broad silly strokes but shows how to find a way to bring peace amid the grass and flowers.
“Native Gardens” by Karen Zacarías, directed by Nicole A. Watson, runs through May 10 at Hartford Stage, 50 Church St., Hartford. Performances are Tuesday through Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. There is an additional 2 p.m. matinee on May 6. $20-$105. hartfordstage.org.
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