Rhetorical Review

Salt Lake City, UT— Four weeks ahead of Día de Muertos, on a Sunday afternoon at Kingsbury Hall, Mexico Beyond Mariachi’s Sugar Skull! A Día de Muertos Musical Adventure asked a theatre full of families to treat remembering as an act of courage. The show is a celebration of Day of the Dead, the Mexican holiday for honoring loved ones who have died. Under its adventure story, the show argues that a tradition survives only in the people who carry it. It’s a warm, funny, culturally grounded hour of theatre, best suited to kids five and up, and its biggest asset is Valeria Aceves in the title role.

The October 4 matinee marked the opening of UtahPresents’ new series of Sunday shows for the whole family. It is a touring, bilingual, roughly hour-long musical with no intermission. Gregory Jafari Van Acker wrote the book and lyrics, Elena Araoz directed, and Rhythm of the Arts produced. The house was full of young families, school-age kids, and Latine families, many of them Spanish speakers.

The story

Vita (Yuliana Sleme) is almost thirteen and living in Brooklyn, and she would rather be at a Halloween party. Her Mama (Brenda Flores) is building the family ofrenda and wants Vita at the cemetery that night. Vita barely remembers the Abuelita who died when she was small. Mama names the drift plainly: Vita stopped listening to their music, then stopped speaking Spanish.

Alone with the altar, Vita tries to recall the song her grandmother used to sing. The sugar skull on the ofrenda (Valeria Aceves) springs to life and pulls her into the land of the dead. Sugar Skull has notes on the family altar, too: with so little on it, she says, she wouldn’t want to come back either.

The trouble is El Coco, the pumpkin-headed bogeyman Vita insisted wasn’t real. He snatches disobedient children, and anyone who tries to leave gets stuck. Only Abuelita knows how to beat him. Along the way, Vita meets Marigold, who makes flowers grow wherever she dances, and breaks the one rule she’s been given: never go down the dark path. She meets La Catrina, who reminds her that no one escapes death when it comes. She also meets the Bruja, who dances with a candle in each hand and helps those who are lost.

At her lowest point, Vita is ready to give up, and the show names it: every hero doubts themselves. With the audience’s help, she blows a conch shell, and her ancestors answer, drumming and dancing in feathered headdresses. Then come los viejitos, the masked old men of the Danza de los Viejitos, a Purépecha dance from Michoacán, tapping their canes and wooden-soled feet.

Vita finally finds Abuelita, who sings her a very old song and tells her why she was named Vita: it means life. Abuelita won’t hand her the answer, though: “I can’t tell you anything you don’t already know in your heart.” The answer is the one Abuelita gave her long ago: don’t be afraid, because death isn’t scary. Vita faces El Coco, and the show states its message outright: death is part of life, and life is for living. It ends in celebration, with a closing song that tells everyone to grab life like a wild bull.

Performances

Valeria Aceves is a highlight of the show, with a strong voice and big personality. Their Sugar Skull is part narrator, part trickster, and part guardian, and they talk to the children in the house without ever talking down to them. Aceves is the one who gets the kids invested.

Yuliana Sleme’s Vita carries the story’s emotional arc, from eye-rolling preteen to a girl who chooses to remember. Her duet with Abuelita isn’t polished, and it doesn’t need to be. The point is a granddaughter and grandmother finding a song together, not a perfect performance.

The three-person ensemble covers a lot of ground. Brenda Flores doubles as Mama and Abuelita, so the mother who pushes tradition and the grandmother who embodies it share one body.

Felicia B. Ávalos (Marigold, the Bruja) and Christopher Cortez (the Ancestor) fill out the land of the dead. Cortez brings the show’s most spiritual moment, waving a bowl of incense around Vita and reminding her that her Indigenous roots are part of who she is.

Music, movement, and design

Sinuhe Padilla’s arrangements, under music director Felipe Fournier, draw on the Mexican regional traditions the company is named for, with plenty of violin. The score appears to run on recorded tracks, but the singing is live, and so are the drums, including a tall drum for the ancestors’ entrance.

Argelia Arreola’s choreography stands out. It moves from folklórico to the ancestors’ feathered, drum-driven dance to the cane-tapping viejitos. During the dances, shadows and narration layer over the movement, and the effect is impressive.

The show talks directly to the kids. It has the shape of a Dora the Explorer episode, with characters turning to the audience for help, but it’s more sophisticated than that. When Vita falters, the whole house stomps and makes wicked, witchy sounds to help her push through her doubt.

Scott Lilly’s set starts in a Brooklyn home built from cutouts: a bedroom, the ofrenda with its family photos, a TV, a chair. Projections shift from city buildings to trees as Vita crosses over. In the graveyard, skeletons hide behind the headstones with their finger bones curled over the top, then come out to dance.

Christopher Vergara’s costumes do a lot of the storytelling. Marigold arrives in a yellow dress with a wreath of flowers in her hair, and Anna Carhart’s lighting floods the stage yellow as she showers it with petals. The viejitos wear painted, toothless masks and ribboned hats, and some characters wear masks that look almost like scarecrows. Jessica Scott’s El Coco puppet is a real fright.

Memory as inheritance

Sugar Skull! is a children’s adventure built on a serious idea: objects alone cannot keep a tradition alive. Mama gets this early, telling Vita that the ofrenda is “much more than just pictures.” The show’s real stakes are not El Coco but a girl losing her language, her music, and her grandmother’s song.

One of the show’s most beautiful choices is how it structures Vita’s journey as a series of meetings with ancestors, each of whom gives her something to carry. Marigold gives her flowers, the Bruja gives her candles, and the Ancestor gives her incense and her Indigenous roots. Along the way, she learns that traditions are passed down, and that the delicate paper of papel picado stands for how delicate life is. By the time she reaches Abuelita, Vita is carrying her inheritance in her own hands. The idea behind it is quietly spiritual: when you’re in trouble, your ancestors will come, if you call them and know who they are.

Still, the last piece has to come from Vita herself. She has to retrieve it from her own memory, so remembering is something she does, not something she receives. Late in the show, she pictures herself as part of a long chain reaching deep into the past and far into the future. That image is the play’s thesis, stated in words a ten-year-old can hold.

Vita’s journey is also about learning who she is. The show moves between Spanish and English without apology, and as Vita reclaims her grandmother’s language, music, and stories, she learns to love her heritage. In this show, that is the same as learning to love herself. With Paula Sanchez-Kucukozer credited as dramaturg and cultural sensitivity specialist, the production treats Día de Muertos as a living practice families keep, not as a costume or spectacle. That matters in October, when the holiday is often flattened into Halloween décor, the very flattening Vita has to unlearn.

In that sense, Sugar Skull! works as a living archive: the stage becomes the place where a family’s knowledge is stored, performed, and handed down.

The verdict

Sugar Skull! is a big-hearted introduction to Día de Muertos with a real idea at its center, and Aceves alone is worth the trip. My reservations are about tone and volume. Between El Coco, the dark path, and the graveyard skeletons, the show has scary stretches, and Sunday’s many babes in arms let the whole house know it. It’s also a loud show. I’d recommend it for kids ages 5 and up, and families with little ones may want to check the age guidance before booking. The ending is heartwarming. Abuelita tells Vita, “As long as you remember, I’ll be right here.” It is a fitting promise for a show that hands its audience the same job.

The UtahPresents family series continues next month with Cirque Mechanics’ Tilt, a circus show set in an amusement park, complete with a Ferris wheel on the Kingsbury stage. In February, the Japanese taiko ensemble Kodo arrives on tour.

Credits

Show info

Sugar Skull! A Día de Muertos Musical Adventure by Mexico Beyond Mariachi, produced by Rhythm of the Arts

Presented by: UtahPresents, Sunday family series

Venue: Kingsbury Hall, University of Utah, Salt Lake City

Performance reviewed: Sunday, October 4, 2026, 4:00 PM

Running time: About 60 minutes, no intermission

Language: Spanish and English

Recommended ages: 5+

Next in the series: Cirque Mechanics’ Tilt (November); Kodo (February)