‘Fade’ Is Grander Than Its Office Setting

An insecure writer named Lucia is settling into her first real job, at a big TV studio. She shares her hopes and fears with a custodian, Abel, who comes in regularly to change the liners in her wastebasket, vacuum her floor and help her open the window when the smell of Corn Nuts (her boss’ favorite snack) gets too intense.

“Fade,” at TheaterWorks through June 30, is a series of short, casual conversations that slowly add up to something bigger.

The play is about heritage and status and identity, and particularly about how important those things are in cultures that feel oppressed and misunderstood. But playwright Tanya Saracho questions the value of those elements as well. She finds the thin lines between cultural pride and bigotry, and between empowerment and overreach.

Lucia and Abel continually discuss what it’s like to be Latino or Hispanic in today’s world. They even argue about the terms:

Lucia: Like with this show. It has this main character, she’s Hispanic, which is…

Abel: You mean Latina?

Lucia: What?

Abel: She’s Latina. Not Hispanic.

Lucia: Whatever.

Abel: No. Not whatever.

Lucia: Listen, I’m not going to go get into the whole Latino vs. Hispanic thing with you because if all those think-tanks haven’t figured out which term we should be using, there’s no way you and I are figuring it out. If you want to get technical, the term is now “Latinix.”

Abel: It’s what?

There are descriptions of life in Mexico and in Abel’s El Sereno neighborhood in Los Angeles. There are direct references to “Trump’s America.” Lucia, who is Mexican, has been hired as a writer on a TV drama that has Latino themes. She feels she was only hired because of her race, and says one of the other writers demeans her as “a diversity hire.”

At times the verbal dance between Lucia and Abel is so fraught and tense that it feels like Strindberg’s “Miss Julie.” At others it’s Beatrice and Benedick in Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing.” And because the writing of a screenplay is involved, there’s a taste of Sam Shepard’s “True West.”

Loud Spanish pop music is piped in during the many transitions from one short scene to the next, keeping the action hopping. Mariana Sanchez’s set design and Amith Chandrashaker’s bright lighting design cleverly lets us see what’s going on in the corridor behind the closed blinds of Lucia’s office.

There’s a wonderful tiny moment in “Fade” where Lucia is ranting and pacing. Abel quietly interjects that she should sit down. No, she responds, she’s too upset. And she doesn’t sit. It may seem like a minor thing, but it’s one that doesn’t happen a lot in theater. It’s the sort of exchange that happens in real life, when people are scattered and guarded. “Fade” is full of such naturalistic moments that ring true.

Director Jerry Ruiz squired this script through its world premiere in Denver, last year and its off-Broadway production earlier this year, and Eddie Martinez played Abel in both those productions as well. Their deep, nuanced understanding of Sarachos’s script really shows. Elizabeth Ramos is nicely cast as Lucia. She has the right mix of attractiveness and neurosis for this character, who has considerable confidence but is still learning a lot about herself. Ramos and Martinez bait each other, and complement each other, beautifully.

“Fade” is a world-wise, world-weary drama set in an office, and it works.

FADE by Tanya Saracho, directed by Jerry Ruiz, plays through June 30 at TheaterWorks, 233 Pearl St., Hartford. Performances are Tuesday through Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2:30 and 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 and 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $50-$65, $15 student rush seats. 860-527-7838, theaterworkshartford.org.