The Other Americans ★★★★

In recent years, the wildly talented John Leguizamo has been an outspoken critic about the lack of representation for Latinos in the entertainment industry, in front of and behind the scenes. As he says in his 2020 Peacock docuseries True Colors: “The wall isn’t on the border. The wall is in American culture.” With his new play, The Other Americans, he’s very much putting some money and action where his mouth is, writing and headlining an emotionally epic drama about a Colombian-American family striving to maintain its grip on the slippery rungs of the socioeconomic ladder it so desperately clings to.

Ladder, meet wall.

Having previously written and performed a number of excellent solo shows, including Freak, Spic-O-Rama and the Tony-winning Latin History for Morons, Leguizamo is ambitiously tackling a much larger theatrical canvas here, and for that alone, his efforts should be commended; it’s no easy feat to add a great American family drama to a canon that includes A Raisin in the Sun, Death of a Salesman, Awake and Sing!, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Fences, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Little Foxes, and arguably its most recent inductees, Tracy Letts’ August: Osage County and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Appropriate and Purpose. An impressive collection of titles, to be sure, but one that is conspicuously missing Latino characters and cultures.

Leguizamo the playwright seeks to fill that gap, even when the effort occasionally falls short.

When The Other Americans begins, it’s not immediately apparent that those are the dramatic mountains Leguizamo is attempting to scale. The year is 1998, and financially strapped laundromat owner Nelson Castro (Leguizamo) and his wife Patti (Luna Lauren Velez, vibrant) are nervously preparing a small homecoming fiesta for their 20-year-old son Nick (Trey Santiago-Hudson, appropriately vulnerable) who’s returning to their home in Forest Hills, Queens, after a brief stint in a psychiatric institution. Joining their party are Nelson’s younger half-sister Norma (Rosa Evangelina Arredondo, essential), their daughter Toni (Rebecca Jimenez) and her fiancé Eddie (Bradley James Tejeda), and the very pregnant Veronica (Sarah Nina Hayon), visiting from their old neighborhood of Jackson Heights, which Patti still misses despite Nelson’s dogged determination to escape it. “Forest Hills is the upgrade we deserved,” he says. “Nice big house. In an exclusive neighborhood. Where all the movers and shakers live… so the kids could meet a better set of people.”

The family is ready to eat, dance and make merry when Nick finally arrives, but instead of fellowship and chicharrón, Nick wants answers, specifically details about when he was attacked in high school, memories of which remain blurry to him but which he and his therapists believe might be the key to unlocking the reason for the depressive episodes he was having in college. Nelson, however, wanting to not dwell in the past, refuses to discuss it.

Boom. End of party. And soon, as Nick continues to uncover what happened to him, the end of their lives as they all know it.

Director Ruben Santiago-Hudson has a great track record with ensemble pieces, including the superb Broadway productions of Jitney and Skeleton Crew, but the work here isn’t as airtight; much of the play, especially in the first act, lacks a needed dramatic propulsion, and not from lack of effort from the talented cast.

The fault may lie with the script. The Other Americans premiered at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., last fall and has likely undergone many a revision before this beautiful production at The Public Theater, where little expense has been spared on scenic designer Arnulfo Maldonado’s splendid set, but more development might be necessary for this play to reach the heights to which it rightfully aspires. Leguizamo wisely avoids a lot of tropes that pop up in archetypal family dramas, but too much of the exposition is awkwardly presented. And aside from Nelson, almost all the parts feel slightly underwritten, and, in the case of Veronica, majorly underwritten. The exception to this is Arredondo’s Norma; her sibling scenes with Leguizamo crackle with dramatic fire.

The positives far outweigh the negatives here though, and with Nelson Castro, Leguizamo aspires to create a tragic patriarch on a level with Willy Loman, Troy Maxson and James Tyrone. For though Nelson Castro is an American who will do almost anything to not be othered, Leguizamo suggests that for Castro — as for so many striving to belong — the burden of otherness proves inescapable.