To paraphrase Aaliyah: Cast size ain’t nothing but a number. In the realm of the theater, no one exactly equates the number of headshots on a Playbill page with the ultimate fulfillment a stage show provides. Still, a question may arise: How few people can you have in a musical and still generate just as many killowatt-hours of energy as a full ensemble production?
It’s not a theoretical question. An answer strongly comes to us with the musical now playing at Pasadena Playhouse, “Mexodus,” a two-hander that can feel like a 20-hander as you’re going with the boisterous flow and forgetting to do the math. The show has Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson as both its writers and its stars, and these are two fellows who ought to be able to write their own tickets for some time to come, on the basis of this (asterisk: at least to the extent that anyone in the theater can), as actors and/or songwriters. Heck, if either of them decided to go really minimalist after this and do a one-man show, I’d be among the first in line.
But in “Mexodus,” it takes two to tango, or to collaborate on a mixture of musical styles, with the complementary flavors of hip-hop and traditional Tex-Mex balladry at the top of the list. It very much feels like a spawn of “Hamilton,” in that it’s a period piece set in a century well before ours with a considerable amount of rapping at the outset. That’s an anachronism you may enjoy or even feel exhilarated by, even as you’re hoping maybe not the entirety of the show plays out in that style. It doesn’t, of course. Part of what gives “Mexodus” such a kick is how expert Quijada and Robinson turn out to be as writers and singers in a surprising number of genres that expand throughout the show in a kind of beautifully inverse proportion to the number of actual players on stage.
