Stage Review - Complemento (Latitude Theatre / eSe Teatro)

Stage Review - Complemento
Presented By: Latitude Theatre / eSe Teatro - Seattle, WA
Show Run: August 01 - August 30, 2026
Date Reviewed: Friday, August 07, 2026
Run Time: 2 Hours, 15 Minutes (including at 15-minute intermission)
Reviewed by: Greg Heilman

Latitude Theatre has built its reputation by introducing Seattle audiences to unique and special works from around the world through thoughtful translations, while eSe Teatro has spent years celebrating Latine voices, cultures, and stories through productions that move naturally between English and Spanish. On paper, a collaboration between the two companies should seem inevitable. Rafael Guizado’s Complemento, translated by Gigi Guizado, sits perfectly at the intersection of their artistic missions. It is exactly the kind of production both companies were created to champion, making this co-production, running through August 30 at the Center Theatre at Seattle Center’s Armory, feel less like a partnership and more like a match made in heaven.

Directed with imagination by Montse Garza, Complemento is a Colombian comedy originally set in Bogotá in 1940. At the center of the story is the mysterious Complemento, a charismatic stranger who inserts himself into the complicated romantic lives of those around him, manipulating circumstances, relationships, and perhaps even hearts as he attempts to bring people together with varying degrees of cooperation from those involved. What begins as a tangled web of love and longing gradually becomes something more, raising questions about who Complemento really is and exactly what role he is playing in all of their lives.

Rather than simply transporting audiences back in time, Montse and the creative team employ a wonderfully inventive framing device. The play opens in the present day as a young woman named Elvira settles in with her phone and headphones, along with other trappings of modern life. A mysterious sound draws her attention to a small transistor radio hidden among the bushes. As she turns the dial, she stumbles upon a radio drama recounting the story of Complemento. What follows isn’t simply a dramatization of the broadcast, but a journey into Elvira’s imagination, where the radio play springs vividly to life before the audience’s eyes. It’s an inspired piece of theatrical storytelling that bridges generations while reinforcing that Complemento himself is a figure unconstrained by any particular time or place.

That timeless quality extends to the play itself. While firmly rooted in 1940s Colombia, Complemento explores themes that feel just as relevant today: the stories we tell ourselves, the roles we play for others, the fears that shape our choices, and the ways one person can completely alter the course of another’s life. Like the best theatre, it doesn’t hand audiences all the answers. Instead, it invites them to leave the theatre still thinking about the questions it poses.

One of the greatest strengths of this production is its unique bilingual presentation, spoken majoritively in English, mixing some Spanish words and phrases in helps keep the setting front and center an allows the actors to accentuate every emotional beat . Even audience members with little or no knowledge of Spanish will have no difficulty following the action. The performances, context, and staging communicate every important beat with remarkable clarity, making the shifts between English and Spanish feel completely natural. Rather than creating barriers, the two languages enrich the storytelling and reinforce the universality of the characters and their relationships.

Complemento himself is one of those rare characters who resists easy definition. He weaves a complicated web, and every scene reveals another facet of his personality. At times he seems like a trickster, at others a smooth-talking salesman, perhaps even a guardian angel, or simply a man gifted with the uncanny ability to become exactly what another person needs him to be. The play wisely refuses to provide a definitive answer, leaving audiences to wrestle with whether he is real, imagined, supernatural, or merely extraordinarily perceptive. That uncertainty is part of the fun. Like a salesman who always seems to have exactly the right thing in his case, Complemento may be working an angle, but what he offers the people around him often has genuine value. The mystery surrounding him becomes less about discovering what he is and more about deciding what we believe him to be.

On the portrayal of this uniquely enthralling character, every once in a while I encounter an actor who inhabits a role so completely that it feels as though they were born to play it, as though it is difficult to imagine anyone else stepping into the character’s shoes. Jorge Chacón’s portrayal of Complemento is one of those performances. He effortlessly balances mystery, humor, sincerity, charisma, and confidence, constantly shifting from one emotional register to another while remaining completely believable.

Much of that comes from the way Jorge uses his entire body to create the character. His posture, the way he carries himself across the stage, the angle of his shoulders, the way he leans into a conversation or takes possession of a room all communicate something about who Complemento is in that particular moment. He doesn’t simply speak the character’s words, he physically inhabits him. Even before Complemento opens his mouth, there is often something in the way Jorge stands or moves that tells us exactly what kind of man has entered the scene. He makes every possibility surrounding the character equally believable, leaving the audience to decide for themselves who, or perhaps what, Complemento really is. His magnetic stage presence makes it nearly impossible to take your eyes off him.

Sofia Ayala is equally compelling as Clara, although hers is a very different kind of performance. There is an extraordinary expressiveness to Sofia’s work that feels completely natural, never exaggerated simply to ensure the audience understands what Clara is feeling. Yet somehow we can see remarkably deep inside her character’s soul. Her quiet pain, her joy, her determination and everything in between register across her face, often before she ever needs to put those feelings into words. Sofia gives Clara a rich interior life, and there are moments when simply watching her react tells us as much about the character as anything she could say. It is a beautiful performance that provides an effective counterpoint to Jorge’s much more outwardly charismatic Complemento.

That strength carries throughout the ensemble. Mario Espinoza, Marena Kleinpeter, Monica Cortés Viharo, Steven Davis, and the rest of the company create characters that feel genuine and fully realized, maintaining an excellent pace throughout. Every performer delivers with confidence, finding the balance between the play’s heartfelt moments and its lighthearted comedy. The increasingly tangled relationships never become difficult to follow because the actors keep the emotional stakes clear even as the story becomes more complicated. There is a genuine sense of trust among this group, allowing Jorge’s larger-than-life Complemento to exist without overwhelming the people whose lives he enters.

And then there is Elvira. At face value, it might seem that Paola Gómez Valencia has been handed one of the less interesting assignments in the production. For much of the evening, Elvira sits quietly to the side watching everyone else perform. After all, what we are seeing is her imagination painting pictures around the voices she hears coming from that little transistor radio. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I had it completely backward. If I had the opportunity to sit just a few feet away and watch a performance as good as Jorge’s, surrounded by an ensemble this cohesive and confident, night after night, I’d consider that a pretty enviable job. In many ways, Elvira has the best seat in the house.

That combination of strong performances and imaginative storytelling is matched by a beautifully unified design team. Jessica Robertson’s scenic design moves smoothly between her portrayal of the outdoor park setting and more the more intimate interior, with Clara’s home standing out as a particularly inviting environment. Tianxing Yan’s costumes convincingly capture the fashions of 1940s Bogotá without ever feeling like museum pieces (a special callout for the men’s shoes, so well matched and quite nice to look at), while Nathan Cardenas’ carefully selected period props help ground the imagined world in a specific time and place. Particularly effective is the large vintage cabinet radio incorporated into the set, a visual counterpart to the small transistor radio Elvira discovers in the bushes and uses to enter the story in the first place.

Dominique Salas’ lighting and Ingrid Bell’s sound design help distinguish reality from imagination without overplaying the transition between the two worlds. The tango choreography by Jorge and Julieta Vitullo adds another layer of passion to an already passionate scene, becoming more than a decorative dance break and instead an extension of the relationships unfolding around it, particularly between Complemento and Marena Kleinpeter’s Blanca. Every design element feels purposeful, supporting the storytelling without distracting from it.

Complemento is the kind of play that quietly casts a spell over its audience. Like its enigmatic title character, it gradually draws you in until you find yourself completely invested, leaving you thinking about its ideas long after you’ve left the theatre. More importantly, it demonstrates exactly why collaborations like this one matter. Latitude Theatre’s passion for bringing international works to Seattle audiences and eSe Teatro’s commitment to celebrating Latine stories prove to be remarkably complementary missions. The result is thoughtful, funny, inventive, and deeply human. The right artists, the right companies, and the right story truly complement one another here, and it is difficult to imagine a better theatrical home for Complemento than the one Latitude Theatre and eSe Teatro have created together.

Complemento, the co-production between Latitude Theatre and eSe Teatro, runs on stage at the Center Theatre at Seattle Center Armory through August 30. For more information, including ticket availability and sales, visit https://latitudetheatre.org/index.html.

Photo credit: Wade Atkinson