Spit in Your Face
Detroit Repertory Theatre
13103 Woodrow Wilson St.
Detroit, Mich.
Until June 28, 2026
I left Detroit Repertory Theatre scratching my head after seeing its world premiere production of Paul Heller and Alberto Lomnitz’s “Spit in Your Face.” The absurdist comedy – already not my favorite genre – is a political satire that explores racism, personal identity and performative righteousness in modern politics, especially from artists and theaters.
The story begins at a theater located in San Francisco’s largely LatinX community. Man-bunned, anti-capitalist Tom Leary – a white man – is losing funding from a Latino foundation over a recent production of "Julius Caesar." The updated production featured President Trump as Caesar and ICE as the Roman Army, with lone Latino actor Tito portraying a servant – a stereotype that has prompted the local LatinX community to boycott the theater.
Tom cannot understand; he’s trying to make a point. He decides to hire departing Mexican American intern Liliana Tzintzún full-time to better understand the Latino community and to assist in directing a new play to be created and directed by renowned, eccentric, anti-colonial Mexican director Fernando Calderón. Tom and Fernando immediately butt heads over the bizarre, boundary-pushing material – which apparently includes a scene where Tito, as Caesar Chavez, pees on Frida Kahlo with a giant fake penis – as well as hazardous mirrors that fill the lobby.
Meanwhile, Liliana is doing her best to keep the peace while figuring out her personal identity. Her heritage is Mexican with Indigenous roots, and she is the daughter of Mexican immigrants who fled the country after losing family members to the drug cartel. She identifies as Mexican American, which is not an option, according to Fernando, who holds animosity toward the United States for stealing Mexican land during the Mexican American War.
Although I had a few laugh-out-loud moments, I did not find the show as hilarious as its marketing suggested, although I have a limited tolerance for absurdist comedy. Throwing tomatoes, staging a wrestling match and using a banana or a vintage microphone as modern cell phones were all amusing jokes within the show, but they dampened the significance of the subject matter.
Fernando’s character was a bit confusing. His eccentricities and dialogue were bizarre to the point where it wasn’t clear, especially in Act 1, if we were supposed to take him and his viewpoints seriously.
One of my favorite parts, however, was the resolution of a dispute between Tom and Fernando over Tom’s insistence that Fernando make a land acknowledgement ahead of his performance. Fernando eventually caves, but uses his land acknowledgement to make a point that such declarations are problematic acknowledgements of wrongdoing without any intention to correct them. He then announces the theater would be returning the land to its Indigenous population, much to Tom’s horror.
I found that Fernando made a fair point. The practice has always seemed pandering to me – “thanks so much for ‘giving’ us this land we stole” – which only seems to relieve some sense of white guilt and not actually do anything to benefit the Native American population.
As the primary opposing forces, Matt Hollerbach as Tom and Henry Ballesteros as Fernando fully embodied their eccentric personas, embracing the over-the-top physical comedy that included Lucha Libre wrestling and the aforementioned tomato fight. Anette Orellana’s portrayal of Liliana started off flat in Act 1, but grew alive in Act 2 as she came to terms with her identity and stood up against both men, calling out their hypocrisies.
“Spit in Your Face” is an interesting story that raises questions about identity, as well as the hypocrisy of virtue signaling, which I found particularly poignant. If you like absurdist comedy, it may be a better fit for you than it was for me, but it was thought-provoking nonetheless.
