'Chúmbale,' Argentine farce at Arlington's Teatro de la Luna

"A can of paint always means something," a character broods in "Chúmbale: El Casado Casa Quiere (Every Love Bird Needs a Nest)," by Argentine playwright Oscar Viale. Boy, does that remark hold true in this 1971 comedy, which is larking about on an Arlington County stage courtesy of Teatro de la Luna. In Viale's mostly antic world, the discovery of a can of latex white in an overcrowded home prompts an avalanche of wacky schemes, family confrontations and physical high jinks. "Chúmbale" can be read as political satire, according to a Teatro de la Luna handout, but -- with the exception of a startlingly grim moment or two -- director Mario Marcel's energetic Spanish-language production skips along quite drolly on the level of farce.

The set's painstakingly cluttered and shabby domestic tableau (Marcel is scenic designer) clues you in to the characters' quandary. The underachieving coffee vendor Enzo (Alex Alburqueque) and his new bride, Mecha (Marcela Ferlito Walder), live with Mecha's parents and siblings. The young couple have virtually no privacy, even in their bedroom, which still harbors Mecha's girlhood toys and furniture: In this household, knocking is a foreign concept, and Mecha's policeman brother Quique (Gerald Montoya) sleeps in the hall, just yards away. When Enzo begins to think about painting the bedroom's grimy walls -- and even expresses skepticism about the sanctity of private property -- Mecha's tyrannical father, Roque (Livio Danna), feels his authority is being threatened. Bedlam ensues.

His expressions perplexed and exasperated, his posture boyishly awkward, Alburqueque creates a funny and endearing portrait of Enzo. Other entertaining turns come from Montoya, whose Quique is alternately bullying and childlike, and Danna, whose cartoonishly thundering Roque swaggers around with his thumbs hooked on his suspenders. Puttering here and there in a pale pink nightgown, Walder's Mecha is cajoling, anxious and giggly; and Leyre Varela and Karin Tovar Cárdenas are aptly nosy and bossy, respectively, as Mecha's mother and sister.

Marcel has invented some clever shtick for the actors, particularly after Enzo has barricaded himself inside the bedroom. The production's atmosphere is so generally frothy, in fact, that it's shocking to encounter a subplot involving Quique and a horrifying sexual assault. This narrative equivalent of a hand grenade, which takes up very little space in the script, is presumably Viale's signal that "Chúmbale" is social criticism in disguise.

Indeed, according to the Teatro handout, the dramatist devised the play as a subtle jab at the military regime then ruling Argentina: Roque symbolized the autocratic government; Enzo represented dreamers bent on self-expression, and so on. The allegory is far from obvious, at least in this production, which primarily plumbs the comic depths in that can of latex paint.

Wren is a freelance writer.

Chúmbale: El Casado Casa Quiere (Every Love Bird Needs a Nest)

By Oscar Viale. Direction and scenic and sound design by Mario Marcel; costumes, Rosita Becker and Nucky Walder; lighting, Ayun Fedorcha. In Spanish with English surtitles (translation by David Bradley).

Two hours. Through March 13 at Gunston Arts Center, Theatre Two,

2700 S. Lang St., Arlington.

Call 703-548-3092 or visit http://www.teatrodelaluna.org.