SOURCE: "Putting the Border Onstage," in Newsweek, Vol. CIX, No. 18, May 4, 1987, p. 79.

[In the following excerpt, Lubenow favorably appraises

Poster for the Broadway revival of Zoot Suit.

When playwright Luis Valdez withdraws to rewrite a script, he envisions himself not as some great Spanish playwright, but like Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman in a stuffy room in New York City smoking cigars and eating Hershey bars. The only difference is that he loves cigars and hates chocolate. "I'm as American as the next guy," he says. "It's just a question of being perceived as such."

In the theater, where that very question can make or break you, Valdez has come triumphantly into his own. With a new immigration law creating millions of hyphenated Hispanic-Americans, he is a powerful...