Sanctuary City

C

Over a year and a half has passed since I last set foot in a theater. My exile ended today with a visit to the Lucille Lortel Theatre for New York Theatre Festival’s production of Martyna Majok’s Sanctuary City. I felt a mixture of eagerness and anxiety when I arrived at the theater. There were two lines, one for people with tickets in hand or on their phone and the other for will-call. I showed my ID, Excelsior Pass and ticket and found my seat. Even allowing for deliberately leaving empty seats between theatergoers, the size of the audience was far from the capacity. The usher patrolled the house reminding people to keep their masks on properly.

My expectations were rather high since I had liked Majok’s Cost of Living a lot and had found her immigrant drama queens flawed but interesting. Once again she has turned to the immigrant community for her subject. This time the focus is on two Latinx “dreamers” in Newark who are 17 when the play begins shortly after 9/11. I was moderately taken aback that the two leading characters were identified only as B and G. The benefit of depriving them of first names was not apparent to me. B (Jasai Chase-Owens; The Tempest and A MIdsummer Night’s Dream at the Public) is a bright hard-working young man whose mother decides to return to her homeland, leaving him alone in Newark. G (Sharlene Cruz; Red Bull/Hunter’s Mac Beth), a friend since third grade, has a mother who has brought home a series of abusive boyfriends who sometimes have included G in their abuse. She has often “crashed” with B for safety. Their sleeping together remains chaste, which should set off alarm bells for what follows. Just before G turns 18, she becomes an American citizen by virtue of her mother’s naturalization. To save B from a bleak future, G offers to marry him so he too can become a citizen. They rehearse answering the immigration officer’s likely questions to authenticate a marriage, Without clinching the deal, G goes off to Boston on a scholarship. Up to that point, the play has been highly stylized, with sentences and even fragments of sentences being repeated either with or without variation. Short scenes are repeated out of sequence for no apparent reason. I did not feel that the stylization enhanced the material. The style of the play becomes much more naturalistic when it jumps ahead almost four years. G has returned from Boston on a school break. B is strangely hostile to her. We then meet the third character, Henry (Austin Smith; Hamilton, An Octoroon), whose presence gives us new information about B. The rest of the play is mainly a contest between G and Henry to win B’s exclusive company. I found the story more than a little implausible. Specifically, I could not believe that G could have been so blind to B’s nature. I had trouble understanding what motivated her. All three actors are attractive and do justice to their roles. The abrupt shift in style midway through the play puzzled me. Rebecca Frecknell, Associate Director of London’s Almeida Theatre, is listed as director, but Caitlin Sullivan (Hundred Days at NYTW) is credited as Remount Director. The set by Tom Scutt consists mainly of a bare elevated platform; his costumes did not draw attention. Finally, I feel that the title is a misnomer. What is commonly understood by "sanctuary city" has almost nothing to do with the play.

While it was a pleasure to be back in a theater, I am sorry that the occasion was a bit of a disappointment. Running time: 100 minutes, no intermission.