The Unicorn’s Native Gardens is a sitcom gleefully tap-dancing at the crossroads between milquetoast banality and misdirected hostility
Native Gardens. // Courtesy Unicorn
If the idiom is true and “good fences make good neighbors,” then can we assume the inverse also applies? That’s the idea behind Karen Zacarías’ Native Gardens, currently onstage at the Unicorn Theatre.
Zacarías’ work takes the form of a simple, even borderline formulaic comedy. There are some weighty issues at play but they are delivered with the lightest of touches. The personal is political here, but it is also fodder for near-sitcom antics.
The Butleys are longtime residents in their posh Washington D.C. neighborhood. Virginia (Merle Moores) is a Lockheed Martin engineer pushing off retirement, while Frank (Mark Robbins) spends his days doting over his tidily manicured garden. When the Del Valles—young, Latinx registered Democrats—move in next door, the excitement of neighborly bonding is quickly derailed thanks to a feud over their shared fence and a misplaced property line.
When Pablo (Justin Barron) and Tania (Areli Gil) discover their property actually expands two feet beyond their existing border, their desire to claim what’s theirs is perfectly understandable. However, the entire play is a case of no one being entirely right and everybody being at least kind of wrong. Yes, obviously the Del Valles should get the property that’s legally theirs, and that will be paying property taxes on—something every homeowner in Jackson County can get fired up about right now.
At the same time, their refusal to let the Butleys process this change before ripping up Frank’s beloved garden to install a new fence, days before an important (to him, at least) gardening competition is undeniably less than kind. Dueling ideologies and brazenly judgemental takes on the other couple’s gardening styles don’t help either side feel respected.
Native Gardens. // Courtesy Unicorn
Making all of this hilariously, realistically relatable is that the garden at the center of all this drama—Mark’s pride and joy—consists of two whole planter boxes filled with nice but extremely basic flowers. This choice from set designer Eric Palmquist adds a level of milquetoast banality to the whole ordeal. Their feud is, of course, not just about the garden or the property line, but about everything they represent and spiral into: deep issues of identity, casual racism, and historic and generational privilege and entitlement.
It is also about the garden, though.
The four members of this small cast have tremendous chemistry, and they each inhabit their characters to the fullest extent. It is a testament to their acting, and to the skill of director Vanessa Severo, that these characters feel real enough for us to see all their nuanced, unneighborly flaws, and not find them blatantly unlikeable or otherwise reduced to caricatures. Similarly, the swift play keeps its lighthearted tone throughout without ever feeling like it’s minimizing the characters or their motivations. We, the audience, can judge those motivations as being frivolous or petty, but we cannot deny their importance in the lives of these characters.
Zacarías’ play is a fun sitcomish romp but still thoughtful and thought-provoking enough to keep your wheels turning for while after leaving the theater.
Native Gardens runs at The Unicorn through September 24.
Native Gardens. // Courtesy Unicorn
