Johendry Puerie plays mom Beatriz and Elena Plaspohl is daughter Olivia in the play ‘Miss You Like Hell,’ opening Nov. 10 at King’s College.
                                 Submitted photo

Johendry Puerie plays mom Beatriz and Elena Plaspohl is daughter Olivia in the play ‘Miss You Like Hell,’ opening Nov. 10 at King’s College.

Submitted photo

‘Miss You Like Hell’ opens Nov. 10

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“I am a lioness,” Beatriz sings. “I am a warrior.”

“I am the beast who ate its foot out the trap.”

The words are powerful, primal. And in the musical “Miss You Like Hell,” they point to how fiercely a mother can love her child.

Beatriz’s daughter is Olivia, a 16-year-old loner who lives in Philadelphia with her father.

The teen is comfortable with books and authors — but with personal relationships? Not so much.

When Olivia makes a reference, in her blog, to wanting to jump off a bridge, Beatriz drives a rusty old Datsun pickup truck across the country to reconnect with and, if necessary, rescue her daughter.

That puts Beatriz more at risk than she usually is, because she is an undocumented immigrant.

“Beatriz can’t just get on a plane. She doesn’t have an I.D. She can’t navigate the system,” said Dave Reynolds. theatre department chair, who is directing the musical at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre from Nov. 10-19.

But Beatriz manages to drive safely across the country, all the way to the home of Olivia’s father, where she cautions her daughter not to wake him but to come away with her.

What is Olivia’s father like?

“I think he does love her,” said Elena Plaspohl, who has the role of Olivia. “But he’s not as emotionally involved as a father should be.”

So maybe he won’t be worried when he discovers his daughter has left with her mother, setting out on the bonding experience of a week-long, cross-country road trip.

“You have all the mystery and promise of the open road,” Reynolds said. “It’s a slice of Americana, very Jack Keroauc.”

This slice of Americana includes motel rooms and parking lots, a mall in Ohio, a judge’s chambers in South Dakota, Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, and Friendship Park, located near the Tijuana/San Diego border, where families and friends are able to visit, with some limitations.

Maybe, as Beatriz and Olivia travel together, they’ll bridge the emotional distance that grew between them during the time they’ve lived apart.

“They haven’t talked in person in four years,” Reynolds said. “From 12 to 16, a lot of growing up goes in during those years.”

But Olivia will also learn that Beatriz wants a favor from her — and that will complicate their relationship further.

“This is the most important show I’ve ever been a part of,” said Kayleigh Bergold, who plays some minor characters and is a props master for the show. “Every subject it deals with is so important — definitely the mother/daughter problem, immigration, love, grief, memories.”

Some of the love, grief and memories are supplied by characters other than the two leads.

Manuel, for one, who came from Peru and sells tamales from a cart in South Dakota, is missing his late wife.

“His wife used to make the tamales, and she died of cancer,” said Ryan Coloma, who plays Manuel. “He makes them to remember her.”

Mom and daughter also will encounter Mo and Higgins, a same-sex couple riding Harleys from state to state. They’ve been in love since 1968 — the Vietnam Era — and now they’re half-way through their ambition of exchanging wedding vows in each of the United States.

Through it all there will be music — percussive Latin rhythms, honky tonk songs, upbeat dance numbers, zydeco, hip hop — provided in various styles by Erin McKeown, who wrote lyrics and music, while Quiara Alegría Hudes, wrote the book and lyrics.

Show times are 7:30 p.m. Nov. 10-12; 2 p.m. Nov. 13, and 7:30 Nov. 17-Nov. 19 in King’s College Maffei Theatre, rear 133 N. River St., Wilkes-Barre.