Wellington Fringe 2026
El Colibrí
SLUG (Society for Little Ugly Girls) Theatre
Genre: Theatre
Venue: BATS Theatre
Festival: Wellington Fringe
Low Down
Thought-provoking piece of theatre, making you question what/where home really is and just how strong blood-ties are in reality. As the saying goes, you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family.
Review
The living room looks, well, lived in, a home from home with family articles scattered on every available surface, an elderly chair, a well sat upon two-seater sofa, with a couple of small tables completing the slightly shabby but homely appearance. Two plastic chairs on the downstage side of a full length, semi-transparent drape convey the impression of a garden, or at least backyard space. Background sounds feature the chirp of insects and the croaking of frogs.
El Colibri (which translates as the humming bird) follows the lives of three quite different sisters. Two (Alma and Camilla) share a father now apparently absent from their lives, content, on the surface, with life in Abuelito’s (their grandfather) house in Puerto Rico. Abuelito (played with tenderness by Monet Wiljo Sam Faifai-Collins) is also grandfather to the third sister (Bella), the girl with ambitions and dreams, now returning to visit her family during a break in her studies in New York, the antithesis of the home she has left behind her.
The action starts, appropriately enough, in the dark with Bella (played with conviction by the impressive Steffany Silva De Lautour) stumbling into the house, seemingly unexpected. It’s clear from the immediate sharp edge to the mainly monosyllabic responses from Alma (the acerbic Marilyn Mansilla) that family tensions are ever close to the surface, her acidic Spanish rendering any translation of her remarks to the returning Bella superfluous. Tone conveys all.
Camilla (played by writer/director Elia Correa) attempts to pour the proverbial oil on troubled waters but with limited success as the conversation slips quickly into vexatious exchanges, the volume and tension rising as the trio confront their respective ambitions, relationships and selves.
All they have in common, it seems, is rapidly fading shared memories of a seemingly idyllic, rural childhood, which is explored in Correa’s deftly shaped script by having the action flip back and forth in time, their recollections played out (to great effect) with back-projected silhouette cardboard characters delivering black and white images of times that have now apparently lost their allure. And colour.
Nostalgia isn’t, as they say, what it used to be and the magic of their childhood contrasts sharply with the chaotic, messy reality of the quite different lives that the three siblings now lead. The almost random use of English and Spanish as the conversations unfold adds to the emotional feel of the piece, the audience watching as a once tight-knit family slowly unravels before them. The denouement where Alma explores why Bella left for New York and her and Camilla’s resentment at her return is as touching as it is unexpected.
This is a thought-provoking piece of theatre, making you question what/where home really is and just how strong blood-ties are in reality. As the saying goes, you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family. The acting is out of the top drawer, the characterisation consistent and believable. The set is evocative and the icing on the cake comes from Sean Brennan’s work as the silhouetter/puppeteer, complete with dancing frog. All in all impressive debut for S.L.U.G. Theatre.
