The Off-Broadway Theatre Review: The Other Americans
By Ross
There’s something ever so familiar to this Public Theater premiere of The Other Americans. But once the spin starts, the detergent used is something very specific to this wash (I swear I won’t use many more laundry metaphors in this review). The energy is all there, played out in the music that pumps forth loud and driving. The windows rise to an optimistic stained glass sunset in a Forest Hills’ family home as Nelson enters, begging the person on the other end of the phone call to “don’t do me like that.” Smoking and talking fast with excuses about payments and debts owed, the landscape for this family drama is set forth with ease in the focused writing of the accomplished screen and stage actor John Leguizamo (Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet).
Although Leguizamo’s writing for the stage usually exists in superb solo shows that lean heavily on comedy, while also digging deep into the life of a Ghetto Klown or the unpacking of some Latin History for Morons, this new play comes to familial life with typical roots, but original form. These are The Other Americans, and the stories of their successes and struggles as brown people in the privileged white-dominate United States. And Nelson, as portrayed with electrifying force by Leguizamo, is stumbling in his attempt to live the ‘American’ dream, but standing tall in defiance to the world, showing nothing but an attempt at resilience and pride to the family that has gathered here today.
One by one, they trickle in. First, his wife, Patti (Luna Lauren Velez), who is the steadying presence in the household with a determined approach to support. Next to arrive is daughter Toni (Rebecca Jimenez), sharp and capable, who is running the family laundromats but still straining for a father’s approval that will never match the blind faith he places in his son, Nick. Even Toni’s wedding to her eager fiancé Eddie (Bradley James Tejeda) and their preparations, assisted by her ambitious aunt Norma (Rosa Evangelina Arredondo) and an old Jackson Heights neighbour, Veronica (Sarah Nina Hayon), feel completely secondary to the looming figure of the absent son. They have gathered together for his return with a feast out back by their newly installed above-ground pool (NOT a real pool, we are reminded), for the return of their “sweetest little boy,” Nick, who is on his way home from a psychological facility after cracking under the strain in a dorm room during his first year of college.
The tension around Nick’s return hangs thick in the air. Nelson and Patti cling to the hope that “things are going to be different this time,” even as Nelson numbs his nerves with drink, promising saintly restraint while hurtling toward anything but. The heat in the house, like the food on the stove, is close to burning, and all I could think as they wait for his arrival was ‘famous last words.’
The Other Americans digs deep into the devious ways that the ‘American’ dream can turn optimism toxic, where lies are told within deals in the framework of protection and support. Nelson is basically a Latino Willy Loman, wanting to appear as successful as their new neighbours who look down on him and his ‘kind’, flinging racial slurs that he tries to bat away with defiance. He’s trying so hard to live the dream, at least the one imposed on him by his abusive immigrant father, that he doesn’t seem to see and feel how his drive is hurting those around him. And when his son does come home, it’s not long until the forceful way this family pushes at each other’s buttons by not listening and not seeing, that a meltdown occurs, reverberating deep into the tense bonds that hold this family together.
“So what else, champ?” is a question Nelson, in a manner of speaking, keeps throwing at his son, but in reality, the family should be questioning Nelson a bit more carefully. Nelson keeps talking a big game about selling the laundromats to a developer, convinced that with a loan from his sister — who, he insists, inherited the “better” stores in better neighbourhoods — he could transform his business with a glossy makeover to match the incoming gentrification. But Norma sees right through him; she has no interest in propping up Nelson’s shaky empire, especially while she’s expanding her own successful ventures to Los Angeles and eyeing Toni as the partner her brother never allowed her to be. The clash exposes Nelson’s desperate pride, Norma’s pragmatic ambition, and the generational tug-of-war over who gets to define success in this family.
Like many family dramas, the focus lies within the dynamics of father and son, with daughters and wives hanging out to the side, hoping to be seen or heard. The Other Americans rinses and spins around those psychological narratives, as drinks are poured and family secrets begin to float up to the surface. As directed with a fairly good flow by Ruben Santiago-Hudson (MTC’s Skeleton Crew), the underlying conflict unfolds with conviction, although as troubled Nick, Trey Santiago-Hudson (2ST’s Toros) shifts too sharply into ticks and outbursts that take away from the undercurrent and tremors of trauma. A little more softener could have been used at the beginning, so a building of momentum could have been achieved to possibly greater effect.
Leguizamo holds the piece together with his aggressive, quick slide into confrontation that echoes back to a parent he both hates and wants to impress, even though he isn’t even around anymore to inflict his bullying brand of encouragement. But there, in that haphazard attempt to reveal more about their marriage, courtesy of set designer Arnulfo Maldonado (Broadway’s Buena Vista Social Club), we are given access to the bedroom dynamics of the couple, and we see a union that hinges on a solid attraction but also a fabrication that quickly rips at the seams. It’s surprising but also not, and in that relationship, we feel the authenticity and complication that Nelson’s dream has manufactured.
Middle-class suffocation is clear, as the stage is overwhelmed with an above-ground pool, backed by looming two-story brick houses, almost laughing at the attempt to become part of the neighbourhood. The tightness underscores Nelson’s anger, pride, and desperate desire for acceptance. The neighbourhood is on the brink of change, but in the late 1990s, as signalled by Kara Harmon’s (Public’s cullud wattah) costumes, that shift hasn’t arrived yet. Velez’s superb turn as Patti conveys a longing to return to the Jackson Heights neighbourhood she once loved, believing it would keep Nick safe after the racially charged attack that contributed to his breakdown. In contrast, their current Forest Hills home marks them as outsiders — The Other Americans — a tension embodied only sporadically by Hayon’s Veronica, whose jokes and quips add little beyond highlighting the family’s cultural displacement. For Nelson, retreating would be defeat, and that kind of surrender feels impossible.
With some work and a sharper ironing, The Other Americans could really stand alongside those other classics, like Clifford Odets’s Awake and Sing!, August Wilson’s Fences, Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, that try to unpack the toxic ‘American’ dream of equality and justice for all. A tighter and more of a slow-burn look into Santiago’Hudson’s Nick could help, alongside the superfluous part of Veronica, regardless of how good Hayon is. Her raison d’être is as contrived as the unpolished unfolding of the play’s traumatic reveal.
Leguizamo’s The Other Americans at the Public Theater NYC has all the makings of a resonant family tragedy, and when it locks into the volatile father–son dynamic, the play brushes against greatness. The specificity of its cultural lens, combined with Nelson’s combustible pride, reframes the “American dream” as both aspiration and trap. Yet too often the play leaves its most compelling threads underdeveloped — daughters and wives drift at the margins, Veronica feels like an unnecessary stitch, and Nick’s unraveling arrives with more noise than nuance. Despite its uneven threads, The Other Americans still crackles with the same kinetic energy that filled the Forest Hills living room at the play’s start—the music, the tension, and Nelson’s restless drive—reminding us that, for all its flaws, this family’s story demands to be felt in full volume. It is a work alive with passion and promise, but one that still needs a steadier hand to iron out its wrinkles.
Santiago-Hudson, at The Public Theater in Association with Arena Stage. For more information and tickets, click here. Photo by Ross.
