Queens (c) Valerie Tarranova
Theater: Queens
At Manhattan Theater Club
Martyna Majok’s follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize winning Cost of Living in 2017 was queens, her play at LCT3 about immigrant women sharing a small and cramped basement in Queens, and while I liked the ambition of the play as well as giving voice to the voiceless, the play’s actual plot felt very dispersed and unwieldy. After a couple of years of tinkering, the play has returned (now with a capital Q in its title), in a confident, shorter production by Trip Cullman and an enjoyable ensemble of actors, headed by a fierce Marin Ireland as our guide into this world at Manhattan Theatre Club. Ireland plays Renia, a Polish immigrant, who in 2017, owns a house in Queens, and is confronted one day by a young and homeless Ukrainian Inna (Julia Lester), confusing her for the mother who left her when she was a little girl to find a better life in New York City. Renia offers the girl a refuge in her empty basement, the same basement she moved into when she first arrived in NYC soon after the attacks on September 11th, when immigrants were especially scrutinized. At that time, the basement was overflowing with immigrants from all corners of the world, with Belarusian Pelagiya (Brooke Bloom), the self-declared warden of the basement; Afghani Aamani (Nadine Malouf, who played the role in the original), taking on the role of mother hen as she furiously tries to obtain legal status; and Isabela (Nicole Villamil), who at the time of Renia’s arrival in 2001 is going back to Honduras, as her pursuit of the American dream has failed. Majok finds some common themes in these women’s shared plight: Many have children they left behind, and many do not have the support of a partner, so they make the big and dangerous leap to come to the U.S. for a better life. The play’s dialogue has an internal poetry to it, especially the underlying theme that to even attempt to find a better life makes them figuratively queens of their own story.
