‘The Other Americans’ is a Riveting Examination of Assimilation

metroweekly.com:

The Other Americans.One of seven world premieres marking Arena Stage’s 2024-25 season, The Other Americans arrives in a powerhouse production directed by award-winning actor-director Ruben Santiago-Hudson, and led by Leguizamo as proudly Colombian-American laundromat owner and family man Nelson Castro.Nelson holds court in his expansive home in affluent, mostly white Forest Hills, Queens, having moved his family from what he calls “ghetto-ass” Jackson Heights.

A scrappy business owner with a small empire of ‘mats all over the borough, he might say he’s living the American dream, but we’re here to witness him waking up to very harsh reality.Leguizamo’s play also aims for a dream, of the Great American Drama, angling to add the Castro’s to theater’s roster of families — à la the Loman’s, the Younger’s, or the Tyrone’s — whose trials and traumas profoundly reflect aspects of the American condition.The emphasis here is on the Latino American condition circa 1998, though the play’s sharp examination of assimilation and upward mobility, or social climbing, reflects roiling tensions that transcend generations and ethnicities.

With tweaks to language, food, and cultural references, The Other Americans could be about a Queens family whose forebears immigrated from almost anywhere outside of Europe.Director Santiago-Hudson distills the play’s ambition and insight into a taut two-act tragedy that still provides virtuoso comedian Leguizamo plenty of opportunities to keep the audience laughing.

Although it’s co-star Luna Lauren Velez’s performance as Patti Castro, Nelson’s level-headed wife, that exerts the gravity drawing the audience into the family’s weighty concerns.Velez registers as especially attuned to how Patti relates to.