Review: Oceanside Theatre delivers a twist in ‘Latin History for Morons’

Rick Najera stars in Oceanside Theatre Company’s production of John Leguizamo’s play “Latin History for Morons.” (Esteban Marin)

By Pam Kragen | [email protected] | The San Diego Union-Tribune

UPDATED: May 28, 2025 at 12:42 PM PDT

Back in 2016, actor-playwright John Leguizamo workshopped his solo play “Latin History for Morons” at the La Jolla Playhouse.

In 2017, it premiered on Broadway. In 2018, it was filmed for Netflix. And in 2019, it returned to San Diego on a national tour.

In every previous iteration of the play, the wiry, manic Leguizamo has performed the show with his signature motor-mouth energy, fiery personality and chameleon-like talent for creating characters and voices. But now San Diego audiences can see “Latin History for Morons” as it has never been seen before.

Oceanside Theatre Company’s new production of the play, which opened Saturday at the Sunshine Brooks Theater, is the first ever staging to feature a different actor.

San Diego native Rick Najera, also an actor and playwright, has taken on Leguizamo’s role of an American father trying to teach Latin history to his son in a country where it’s largely missing from the history books.

Najera brings an entirely different energy and style to the show. He’s more the laid-back, gentle-hearted dad figure than Leguizamo’s angry activist.

And, with director Herbert Siguenza, Najero has made elements of the story his own. Instead of the rough and scrappy childhood Leguizamo experienced in Queens, N.Y., Najera talks about growing up in quiet La Mesa, attending Grossmont High and performing Shakespeare at the Old Globe.

Despite their personal differences, both Leguizamo and Najera connect intimately with the material about the whitewashing of Latin history in America.

The play is set in a classroom designed by Douglas Cumming that’s festooned with Latin American flags and photos of Latin American artists, musicians and historical figures. Najera delivers the entire play to the audience in direct address, explaining how his son can’t find a Latin historical hero to write a school paper about, so he embarks on a quest to teach his son — and the audience — 3,000 years of Latin history.

The storytelling begins with the Spanish conquistadors like Cortez and Pizzarro, who brought diseases that wiped out whole populations of indigenous peoples, including the Aztecs, Taíno and Incas. He talks about how modern-day Latinos carry the blood of European, African and Indigenous ancestors. And he talks about how Latinos colonized the southwestern U.S. long before Americans, and how Latinos have fought and died in every U.S. war, beginning with the American Revolution.

While Leguizamo presented the play as 95-minute one-act, Najera is performing it in two acts, which feels unnecessary and the second act never regains the momentum of the first. But the play is thought-provoking, funny and audience interactive, and Najera is a likeable, relatable storyteller.