Sharing Citizenship Through Marriage in GALA’s ‘Hugo’

metroweekly.com:

The 22+ Weddings of Hugo, currently at GALA Hispanic Theatre in José Zayas’ suspenseful D.C. premiere production. Rather, the comedy, first produced last year at Teatro Dallas, zeroes in on two women and one man whose lives were changed by marrying Hugo Wagner.Through them, we come to see him, and ponder the question they’ll eventually ask: Why, Hugo?

What would motivate the mild-mannered postal worker to get hitched to at least 18 different men and women?Ott, opening his first full season as GALA’s Artistic Director, based Hugo on the true story of a man not named Hugo, who married over 20 times “for an extraordinary and beautiful reason.” The play’s Hugo, portrayed with brio by Carlos Castillo, apparently has many reasons, not all of which he’s eager to reveal, though one motivation is fairly obvious.The spouses we meet — lovesick Irene (Yaiza Figueroa), wary mother Wafa (Giselle González), and gay writer Elmar (Víctor Salinas) — are all immigrants.

By whichever means they entered the United States, they long to stay. And Hugo is happy to help by sharing citizenship through marriage.The details of Hugo’s divorces, if any, are not made entirely clear, but the serial bigamy and the immigration deception leave Hugo extremely vulnerable to the law.

His spouses also risk arrest, detention, and deportation, but they’ve already risked so much just to be in the U.S. — as Irene, Wafa, and Elmar each explain in turn.