Anthony (writer & performer Rodolfo Alvarado) wakes from a nightmare brought on by the voices of the Nazis who tortured him and murdered his fellow soldiers. (Photo Credit: Ramona Logan)

Undesirable Secrets – A Gut-wrenching, Moving Performance – Review
by Ramona Logan
Frisco Lakes Lifestyle

The set of Undesirable Secrets is simple: three chairs and a table. But the performance is explosive with a gut-wrenching, moving performance that tugs at your soul.

Undesirable Secrets is a one-man drama based on the true story of Mexican American Anthony Acevedo, a WWII Army combat medic and POW who survived the torturous horrors of Berga, a Nazi labor camp. Sixty-seven American soldiers died there and during the ensuing death march. Rodolfo Alvarado did an incredible job of researching, writing the traumatic story of Anthony Acevedo, and performing this masterpiece. You will lose track of time during this non-stop hour-and-a-half-long monodrama because Alvarado puts so much passion and emotion into his performance.

Twenty-year-old Acevedo was in Company B, 275th Infantry Regiment, 70th Infantry Division. On January 6, 1945, Acevedo and his detachment were on patrol on a rocky hill near Phillipsburg, when they were cut off from their company by German troops. The forty GIs fought six days during the Battle of the Bulge before they ran out of ammunition and were captured by the Nazis. They were forced to walk barefoot in the bitter cold and snow to troop transports that delivered them to Stalag XI-B, where over four thousand American GIs were held. From there, Acevedo along with 350 American GIs, an estimated seventy-six of them Jewish, were shipped in cattle cars to the slave labor camp Berga. There, the American soldiers labored seven days a week, twelve hour days, surviving on nothing but bread and water. They were brutally tortured, some dying from their injuries or killed if they could not keep up with the labor detail.

Alvarado’s performance was powerful and moving. You could feel the anguish of the agonizing ordeal. Alvarado made use of the simple set - sometimes standing on the table which became a cattle car or troop transport, other times lying on the table withering in the excruciating pain of the nightmares that haunted him until his death at ninety-three-years-old. The three chairs served as an interrogation room, a psychiatrist's office, a passenger car, a solitary confinement cell, and the home of Acevedo’s father, a man whose physical and mental abuse of his son is also covered in the play.

Despite the depressing subject matter, Alvarado’s words and acting compelled you to stay focused and engaged as the drama of the one-man play unfolded, providing a personal slice of history from a viewpoint rarely shared in relation to World War II. I don’t remember hearing anyone in the audience move or make a sound during the preview of Undesirable Secrets, which was held on February 5, 2025, at Frisco Lakes in Frisco, Texas. Additional performances are planned as the production prepares to embark on a national tour.