The Village Voice
April 1999
Sightlines

All the Rage

Homegirls on the Prowl (Henry Street Settlement) unleashes seven young Latina women wrestling with the violent death of a close friend. Under a haunting mural, "Angel, 1979­1997," these chicas stomp around their asphalt playground, mouthing off famously to mask their hurt.

Writer Cyn Cañel Rossi and director Yvette Tomlinson unfold their piece in 15 vignettes— coming-of-age stories really— that are as much about loss as they are about passion, fear, identity, and the torture of trying to fit into a world too staid to absorb a young woman's unfettered rage. With bits about abuse and poverty, cultural pride and coming out, these could be the recollections of girls anywhere. But this production cuts to the raw material, stoking the complexities of what could elsewhere slip into the stock experience of adolescence.

It's a rare thing for a cast this size, all delirious smiles melting into gestures jacked with attitude, to be so in sync. Homegirls runs an hour and a half, and not once do they miss a beat or break their rhythm. What gels the piece together is language itself. The homegirls speak in stylized verse, drenched in metaphor and textured with images. Maybe it seems counterintuitive. But tough girls do tend to speak in code, so when Gladys shapes the words lived, felt, defied, sexed, to describe her sexual awakening and then with a bounce meows, to her friend, "Morena, I need to talk. Me and the teacher broke up," or when the homegirls warn Angel, "Don't let him love you like that, that way," the statement is so true that, simple as this sounds, you forget they're acting. — Kaelen Wilson-Goldie