Toward the end of Matthew Barbot’s new play, “The Beautiful Land I Seek,” a writer in his 30s, plainly modeled on Mr. Barbot, is asked if his plays are political. After making what’s described in the script as “a kind of useless gesture,” the character responds, “I mean … I kinda think everything is political, right?” Sensing his questioner isn’t satisfied, he adds, “I write all sorts of things, but people seem to like the identity plays best.”
Both answers are examples of the kind of sly, knowing lines that fill this one-act piece, which is both farcical and sobering and displays an absurdist streak that only reinforces its political roots. The play, now being presented at the Puerto Rican Travelling Theater, is based on a real-life event: an assassination attempt on President Truman by Puerto Rican activists in 1950.
The would-be assassins, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, were New York-based nationalists seeking independence from the United States. Just prior to their trip to Washington, failed uprisings in their native country had led to bombings in several cities and towns. While Torresola was killed during the failed attempt, Collazo lived; he was sentenced to death, but Truman commuted the penalty to life imprisonment, and President Carter later shortened it further, to time served, enabling Collazo to end his days in Puerto Rico.
“Beautiful Land” — the full title translates to “La Linda Tierra Que Bosco Yo” — follows Oscar and Gris, as he is called here, on a fantastical version of the train ride carrying them to their mission. Nestled together in a compartment neatly designed by Tristan Jeffers, the two men — Gris, played by a boyishly handsome Bobby Román, seems younger, more idealistic and impetuous, while Alejandro Hernández’s Oscar is both more stoic and wearier — try to prepare and strategize, but they’re interrupted by a steady stream of visitors, consisting of historical and fictional figures from the past and future.
Christopher Columbus turns up, looking for India and, when he doesn’t find it, demanding Gris’s gold watch. He’s eventually soothed by Maria from “West Side Story,” who recalls “teachers from America failing Bernardo and Chino until they dropped out.” Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Alexander Hamilton also stops by, seeming less noble than he did in the Broadway production: “You don’t wanna mess with me,” he raps. “I’m partially behind our fiscal policies/So history will not be very harsh with me.”
Truman himself enters the compartment twice, played by Daniel Colón with a deft coolness that contrasts sharply with his hammy takes on Hamilton and Columbus. When Gris and Oscar confess their plans to kill the president, he is unruffled. “You shouldn’t get mixed up in all that rabble-rousing,” he chides Gris. “This is the problem with the races, I think. Same in the South, right now. Always blaming the white man, the government, for problems with your own communities, your own cultures.”
Repeatedly, Oscar and Gris wonder aloud what language they’re speaking, English or Spanish. The latter is sprinkled throughout the play, with screens offering subtitles in both languages. José Zayas provides the kind of energetic direction required by Mr. Barbot’s frequently flamboyant characters, who include a more successful presidential assassin: John Wilkes Booth.
Revived by a zesty Ashley Marie Ortiz, who also impresses as Maria and in several other roles, Abe Lincoln’s murderer is met with disdain by Oscar, who sees himself as far more virtuous. “You, who had everything … killed a powerful man because you couldn’t stand sharing even scraps from your table with the people in your country who had the least,” Oscar sneers. Booth sees things a bit differently: “I’d hoped to be a hero. You two are unburdened by such pretensions, and I suspect that will make it easier.”
Some of Mr. Barbot’s most direct political commentary is reserved for the writer, a visitor from 2020, who enters wearing a facemask. Played by a drily anxious Nate Betancourt, he is full of news, little of it good: about the pandemic, hurricanes, the greed and corruption that have only further complicated Puerto Rico’s plight. “The real business draw for the most part is using the island as a tax shelter,” he reports, and then quips, “I guess you don’t know what hedge funds are.”
The writer’s first response when asked about the future, though, is that “theater is terrible,” another of Mr. Barbot’s little jabs at contemporary culture — though this brightly thoughtful piece, for its part, offers no evidence to support that theory.