Tangled Romances, in Need of Some Pruning ‘Mala Hierba,’ a New Play by Tanya Saracho

A steamy snippet of a telenovela is heating up the McGinn/Cazale Theater, where Mala Hierba, a new play by Tanya Saracho, opened on Monday night as part of the Second Stage Theater’s Uptown series. A crisis in the life of a young Mexican-American woman suffering under the thumb of a rich but brutal husband provides the juice in this sudsy but enjoyable drama. In her grand mansion in a southern Texas town, the beautiful Lili (Marta Milans) lives in uncertain splendor as the wife of Alberto, a “border magnate,” as the script vaguely describes her unseen husband. She’s the latest in a series, as Alberto’s 25-year-old daughter, Fabi (Ana Nogueira), repeatedly reminds her; although Fabi gushes that Lili is her favorite of Alberto’s wives, the implied taunt (later made explicit) is that she will certainly not be the last. The brittle, viper-tongued Fabi lives in Houston, where she spends her time enrolling in, and then dropping out of, college classes, while spending lots of Alberto’s money. She’s come south this weekend because Lili is giving a party for Alberto’s 55th birthday. But Fabi decides that Lili deserves a present, too. She casually announces that she’s invited Lili’s old friend Mari (Roberta Colindrez), whom she ran into in town, to the party.