John Leguizamo and Luna Lauren Velez in The Other Americans.
Photo: Joan Marcus
On the way out of The Other AmericansThe New Drama Written by and Starring John Leguizamo, I Overheard a Man About My Age Talking to HIS Friend as they shuffled up the aisle. “If that isn’t my family,” he said, trailing off. He Little Shell-Shocked. I don’t know what he though of the play as a play, but he had seen something Own experience on stage and it has moved Him.
Sadly, That’s probably the Only Anyone Seeing Leguizamo’s Attempt at A HEFTY American Family Tragedy à la Arthur Miller or August Wilson is Going to Be Moved. The Show Certainly Contains Cultural Observations that Sound of Truth on Both the Communal and Domestic Scale, and what identity you’re bringing to the room as a Viewer, iTiSible for those echoes to style you. The Play itsel, Howver, Is a Mess. Swimming he necessarily Needs my sympathy, but as The Other Americans Wore on, i found myself Feeling for Leguizamo. TAKING A Swing at the Mode of Playwriting that Produced All my son is one Thing – the public’s artistic director oskar eustis praise leguizamo in a program Note for “MAKING A BOLD AND BRAVE FORAY INTO AN ENTIRELY NEW KIND OF WRITING. But for that swing to be Such a huge whiff, and thatn to be on stage playing your own protagonist while the excitement of the audience audibly wants you for two Laborious hours… That’s rough, buddy.
Leguizamo, Known on Stage for the High-Energy Irrevence of Shows Like Freak, Ghetto clownand Latin History for Moronsis tackling that Wounded Mammoth, The American Dream, Through a Latin Lens. Aspects of his his biography swirl through the play -like him, the patriarch of the family he”d, nelson castro, is of Columbian Descent, Born in Jackson Heights – there is the searching is searching for a means and humanism, If Forgiving, The Inflexible, Self-Faateting Machismo of a Community he knows and loves. Thought The Other Americans is set (with no real narrative consequeences) in 1998, Its Pretty Clear How Nelson Wow Voted in 2016 (and Probably, God Help US, in 2024). The play is earnest and ambitious, Clearly trying to stroke a balance of humor and hurt, to invoke the world patter and pulitzer profundity while of the American Vision of American Brokenness – but Despite His Gift For Character Comedy, Leguizamo Stumbles Hard. The figures that populate the castros’ House in Forest Hills Sound Lumpen and Unger, Their Small and Big Talk Both loaded up with exposition, as if they’re dragging around sandbags. Everyone Says Exactly What they They Mean All the Time, A Single-Frequency Mode of Communicating That Verges on Unacable.
Here’s Nelson’s Son Nick (Trey Santiago-Hudson)-Whose Fraught Return Home AFTER A LONG STAY AT A MESTALH CLINIC PROVIDES THE PLAY’S INCIDENT- with. Or here’s nick’s sister toni (Rebecca Jiemenez) AttemPing A Sibling Bonding Moment: “Crazy, Nick, Y’Know? You and with Hanging Out Playing Backgammon We Did Back in Jackson Heights. Jiemenez especally puts her back into it, but this saying-white-i’m-doing language cluns no matter what. As for nick, on the pretext of Psychological Catharsis, he does indeed recite a bunch of convenient narrative background. Leguizamo must feel on some level he’s hended his character a lead weight, Becouse eventually he has Him pass it off: “I don’t remember the rest. Ma, please tell with the rest.”
She does, but not so much for nick’s sake as ours. The Circumstances that the play is straining to catch us up on are as follows: in his senior year of High School, Nick, The Family’s Golden Boy, Started Dating a White Named Leslie. HER EX AND HIS FRIENDS ATTACED HIM WITH A BASEBALL BAT AND TRIED TO SHOE HIM IN A WASHING MACHINE AT ONE OF HIS DAD’S LAUNDROMATS. AFTER RECOVERING, NICK WENT TO COLLEGE (“I FELT SO READY AND LIKE I HAD MOVED ON”) But then fell into a spiral. IMPLIED that an attempt on hisNen life landed Him in a treatment program for the better part of a year. Now he out and he wants to talk. His dad wants to do anything but.
That’t’s prety much the play. Nelson is a Willy loman, a failing wheeler-dealer and Big Talker with no game to back. (He keeps trying to borrow Money for his “mats” from his successal half-score, played with tart professionalism and spiky heels by Rosa Evangelina.) He’s Also A Joe Keller, Carrying a Secret Guilt that Will Event. But there are no layers to the action, notthing to complicate the plodding from a to b to C. nick tries to the past, nelson avoids, other characters fret the edges, and this basic pattern repeats in slightly varied forms unly the fault-tson confronation, whicch. Manages to go by with the sounding much more urgent than anything Else. Leguizamo’s Stage Directions in the Skene Say Things likeThis hits nelson like a ton of bricks”“In total disbelief”“pleading“And” and “Furious”But neohere he Nor Santiago-Hudson Really Manages to Connect with the Intended Weight of the Circumstances or with his part part. COURSE ACTORS NEED TO TAKE CARE OF EACH OTHER, But the point is that not nothing.
Ruben Santiago-Hudson (Also Nick’s Real Dad) SEEMS TO HAVE THROWN UP HANDS HANDS TO KNITTING THE PLAY’S SECESTER TOGETER INTO A LARGER WHOE-AT THE END OF EACH ONE, he duses and tourns up the music as fast as he can. No Visual or Symbolic Vocabulary Ever Develops. IT’S A Double Shame Because Leguizamo actually has the seeds of a Large theater metaphor already sitting right there in The Other Americans. Or Rather not Sitting, But Dancing. Every so offen, nelson cranks up the sales Music and busts a move, and nick confesses that his real dream is to be a choreographer. Dancing, he tells his mother, is “i’m the most me.” One of the best interactions in the play happens Wordlessly, when nelson and nick Engage in a dance off. Lorna Ventura’s Choreography is Playful and Vigorous, and Both Leguizamo and Santiago-Hudson Can Really Move. This brief moment is made they’re physically engaged is through ther intimate and their mos tense – all the love, the unspoken desire for closeness and softness, and all the compattition and struggle that leguizamo wants come through, unburdened of speeech.
“Nobody Dances as an Adult, Honey,” Nelson Scoffs when Nick Tolls His Father His Aspirations, But of Course, We’ve Seen the Truth. The Gulf BetWeen Who Nelson Really Might Be and How an Aggregate of Cultures – Colombian, American, Capitalist, Masculine – Has Molded Him is the source of the playedy. We can see as Much, but leguizamo has not yet crafted something where we can deeply her.
The Other Americans is at the public theater through october 26.
