Regional Reviews: San Francisco/North Bay The Heart Sellers Also see Patrick's reviews of Back to the Future: The Musical and Waste
The Heart Sellers is also set in the past, specifically November 22, 1973. It's Thanksgiving Day and Lulu, a Filipina immigrant (whose full name is Luningning Ignacia Mangahas de la Rosario Bustos), has invited a fellow newcomer to the studio apartment to share the holiday. Her guest is a young Korean woman named Hong Jae Ha, who has chosen to go by Jane to make her assimilation a little easier. Lulu (Nicole Javier) is alone on Thanksgiving, as is Jane, since both are married to young residents in training at a local hospital. Since their husbands are working a night shift (evidently because Thanksgiving isn't a part of either the Filipino or Korean cultures so the administrators figure it's won't matter to them), the women are alone for the holiday. Lulu is more than a bit of a chatterbox, and for the first few minutes of the play, Jane almost never speaks, choosing instead to listen politely as Lulu natters on about how it's the first time she's had a guest in the apartment and how that "feels somehow super monumental" and how she loves Kmart: "So much things!" Lulu doesn't know how to cook, but instead of sticking to the grocery list her husband left her, she has instead splurged on a whole turkey. Jane (Wonjung Kim), however, does know how to cook, "Because, Julia Child," she says. Although the turkey the still frozen, Jane rubs it with oil, sprinkles on some salt and pepper, and puts it in the oven with a couple of yams Lulu had also purchased. With dinner in the oven, the two women settle down to chat (though Lulu drives the conversation throughout) over a couple of bottles of Lancers. "Fancy, fancy wine," Lulu insists, though every time Jane takes a sip, her face screws up in disgust at the plonk that has been poured into the porcelain mug fashioned like a cow's head that Lulu has given her. As the wine flows, the two women begin to open up to each other about their hopes and fears and plans for the future. Jane confesses she once trained as a painter and would like to travel to the Louvre to see the Chagalls and Van Goghs. Lulu relates how she and her husband went to Disneyland for their honeymoon, though they didn't actually go inside the park. "So expensive!" Both women seem resigned to staying in the U.S.–their entry was aided by the passage of the Hart-Celler Act, which expanded immigration access. (Prior to its passage in 1965, entry to the U.S. was mostly limited to Western Europeans.) Still, they can't help but feel a little at sea in their new home. They share the opinion that, in America, everything seems to smell different: trees, beaches, rain–even the yams they hungrily devour while waiting for the rock hard turkey to finish roasting. Although there is little here in the way of story, the focus and energy these two performers bring to this 90-minute, intermission-less slice of life more than make up for its paper-thin plot. Javier and Kim are so fully committed to their roles that we in the audience are able to exist as flies on the wall, witnessing the intimacy of two acquaintances who slowly but surely convince us this will develop into a deep friendship. I never once thought of either of them as performers, only as Lulu and Jane. It helps that Arnel Sancianco's set design perfectly embodies a sort of low-rent living, with its card table and vinyl chair "dining set," Levitz-era sleeper sofa covered in a nubby polyester, and cramped kitchen with its harvest gold refrigerator and electric stove. Lloyd Suh is an incredibly talented playwright. While his The Far Country was more ambitious, spanning time and continents, The Heart Sellers is an intimate, focused look at the challenges immigrants face, but is just as powerful in its own, quieter way. The Heart Sellers runs through March 9, 2025, at Aurora Theatre Company, 2081 Addison Street, Berkeley CA. Shows are Tuesdays through Fridays at 7:00 p.m., Saturdays at 8:00 p.m., and Sundays at 2:00 p.m. Tickets are $20.50-$56, with reduced prices for high school and college students. For tickets and information, please visit www.auroratheatre.org or call 510-843-4822. |