Ants, Astronauts, and Asparagus: Latiné Theater Lab Delivers a Wild Ride

By Aaron Krause

A social media influencer learns from a DNA test that she is among the 40 percent of individuals who can smell asparagus in their urine. An otherworldly being tells two zoo-goers that ants, not humans, are among Earth’s dominant species. A woman aboard a spacecraft sometime in the future is murdered because she sang “Greensleeves” once too often, driving an astronaut to kill.

These are among the absurd, eyebrow-raising realities in Brian Harris’s odd yet captivating, campy new science-fiction comedy Last of the Red Hot Robots. Latiné Theater Lab (LTL) Artistic Director Alex Gonzalez has said the company’s world-premiere production is unlike anything else on stage. He may be right. Fortunately, theatergoers have until Sept. 27 to catch LTL’s wacky and endearing staging inside Empire Stage’s intimate black box in Fort Lauderdale.

Gonzalez directs with appropriately over-the-top comic energy, guiding a small but versatile cast of South Florida performers — Wendy Chamorro, Samuel Krogh, Ryan Townsend, Susanna Ninomiya, Quinn Colón, and Brian Shaer. Each actor portrays multiple characters with exaggeration yet truth during the brisk, 80-minute, intermission-less production. Because the performers sincerely inhabit their characters even as they’re comedically over the top, it’s easy to laugh nonstop and even care about these people.

Read the full article here