Blurry “Dear Dead Drug Lord” Unable to Score High

So four high-school girls climb into a treehouse and attempt to conjure the ghost of Pablo Escobar…. 

No, not a joke, but Dear Dead Drug Lord isn’t much more substantial. Playwright Alexis Scheer bets the house that if she parades teen female identity crisis in front of you that you’ll focus on the feels and fail to see the thinness of story/character/substance. 

But there are some big laughs for what isn’t a comedy, plus a visceral conclusion that sends you home feeling the experience.

It’s 2008, and the Dead Leaders Club has been suspended from campus because its current members — Pipe (Emily Quintero), Squeeze (Jordan Gelotte), and Zoom (Natalie Santiago) — have departed from its tradition of celebrating the lives of JFK and MLK to favoring the likes of Josef Stalin and now Pablo Escobar, the cocaine kingpin who met his end at the hands of Colombian police in 1993. Because the club recently lost a member and needs a new third to have the standing to be reinstated (yes, third: Pipe says she doesn’t count because she’s president. Huh?), they initiate Kit (Tiara Estupinian), who believes she may be Escobar’s illegitimate hija. 

Or is it because they need a human sacrifice to bring back Pipe’s dead sister? And what does the Pipe’s family’s gardener’s resemblance to Escobar have to do with anything? There’s a lot of confusion in Dear Dead Drug Lord — and however apt it may be vis-à-vis the girls’ difficulty figuring out who they are and how they fit in the world, it’s also in the writing, and in the end it doesn’t amount to much. Okay, they’re confused, hysterically confused. And?

But several throwaway jokes land big thanks primarily to Natalie Santiago. Also, director Alana Dietze’s blocking maximizes the brief-yet-mighty finale. But she badly drops the ball in what may or may not be a coat-hanger abortion lasting five seconds with no blood and without the removal of underwear, so the audience is left even more at sea than we are by Scheer’s nebulousness alone.

Dear Dead Drug Lord is not one to watch with a critical eye. But blur your focus enough, and who knows what you’ll feel?

Dear Dead Drug Lord at California Repertory — Cal State Long Beach
Times: Thur-Sat 7:30 p.m., plus Sat 2 p.m.
The show runs through March 23.
Cost: $23-$25
Details: (562) 985-5526, csulb.edu/theatre-arts
Venue: CSULB Studio Theater, Theatre Arts Building (South Campus), Long Beach