Theatre in Review: The Other Americans (Public Theater) John Leguizamo, for thirty-five years the master of the funny, frank, often scalding solo performance piece, has now committed the most radical act of his career, penning an old-fashioned drama out of the Arthur Miller playbook. The penny drops at the sight of Arnulfo Maldonado's detailed set design, depicting a kitchen, yard, streetscape, and upstage swimming pool. The cognitive dissonance continues as Leguizamo rolls out an exposition-heavy first act of the sort that would have been par for the course on Broadway in 1950. The Other Americans (produced in association with Arena Stage) is also an old-fashioned star vehicle, with the playwright taking the lead role of a Colombian-American businessman on the brink, destroying his family with lies and financial shenanigans. It's Death of a Salesman, seen through a Latino lens and informed by the amoral deal-making ethos of the Trump era. For Leguizamo, however, the classic family-drama format is sometimes more constrictive than liberating, even though he has given himself a fine role as Nelson, owner of a laundromat chain and a practiced domestic bully, who lives to bust his loved ones' chops in a just-kidding sort of way. (They mostly roll their eyes and get on with it, inured as they are to his acrid, wisecracking ways.) Dismissed by his late, unloving father, and aggrieved at a business world that ignores and demeans him, Nelson doggedly insists on his importance by dragging his wife and children out of their comfortable Jackson Heights community, installing them in Forest Hills, where they feel lonely, derided, or worse. Cementing his newfound status is the impending deal that, he insists, will permanently secure their affluence. But if it fails, bankruptcy looms. Further rattling the family cage is the homecoming, from a mental institution, of Nick, the golden boy and heir to the business, who suffered a breakdown during his freshman year at St. John's. Nelson wants a quick return to normality but Nick frustrates him on every front: He has gone vegetarian (practically an Oedipal rejection in this household), he wants to be a choreographer (eyebrows are raised), and, most heretical of all, he wants to move out of the house. It's a trifecta of filial rebellion. Even worse, Nick wants to discuss the incident -- a brutal beating by a gang of white kids -- that left him traumatized and unable to cope; little does he know that Nelson's failure to press charges is linked to a secret that will tear the family apart. In its stronger moments, Leguizamo shows how Nelson and his wife, Patti, frantically wave away the young man's concerns, instantly driving him back into a spiral of depression and anxiety. But, through most of the first act, one is too aware of the playwright laying down his dramatic structure, plank by plank; the exposition is baldly obvious, much of it stuff we've seen before. The play improves markedly in the second act, when the nature of Nelson's Faustian bargain, with its shattering implications for Nick, is revealed; Leguizamo is especially good at evoking the mix of anxiety, greed, and misdirected love that drives Nelson to make such terrible choices. Even here, a sense of creeping familiarity undermines the effect: The scene feels eerily like a replay of the ultimate standoff between Biff and Willy Loman in the Miller masterpiece. Homage is one thing; imitation is another. Leguizamo, whose solo shows teem with raunchy, vivid, hilarious language, strikes a paler, more derivative note here, and he hasn't totally mastered the mechanics of this sort of drama, especially when it comes to populating the stage. He does all right by Patti, Nelson's battling, yet loving, spouse (who has a few blind spots of her own), and she is further enlivened by Luna Lauren Velez, happily armed with a presence equal to her co-star. (Wait for the moment when, learning of Nick's new aversion to meat, she furiously trashes the main course of his homecoming meal; you don't want to cross this mother.) But several other characters, including sharp-tongued daughter Toni, her plodding soon-to-be husband Eddie, and Patti's regretfully pregnant best friend Veronica, are little more than message-bearers, ladling out dollops of exposition that keep us up to speed. Rather better is Norma, Nelson's stylish and successful sister, who boldly informs him that his financial troubles are the fruit of his character flaws, not a prejudiced white power structure. (As played by Rosa Evangelina Arredondo, armed with a side-eye that kills, she provides Nelson with such a worthy opponent that one wishes she would hang around longer.) Most distressingly, Nick remains insufficiently realized, despite solid work by Trey Santiago-Hudson. He remains a cipher; too many characteristics (his career plans, a romance in rehab with a Jewish girl, an interest in Buddhism) are brought up only to be quickly dropped, and an ill-advised escape plan to Los Angeles with Toni and Eddie is little more than a device to set up the climax. He needs much authorial attention, more fleshing out; otherwise, he is little more than a passive victim of Nelson's machinations. Ruben Santiago-Hudson's production is grounded in a solid naturalistic design. Maldonado's set is filled with felicitous touches, including the window treatments, one for each side of the audience, and a stained glass decorative feature, showing a sailboat at sea during a sunset. Kara Harmon's costumes are filled with subtle character observations; note, for example, the difference between Norma and Patti's personal styles. Jen Schriever's lighting and Justin Ellington's sound design are both typical of these fine pros. Santiago-Hudson's direction has its moments: The first meeting between Patti and the returning Nick is packed with understated emotion, bringing the theatre to a hush. A casual domestic bedroom scene between Nelson and Patti goes a long way toward explaining how their marriage has endured. (Watching another disappointing ballgame, Nelson grumbles, "On my tombstone. I want it to say cause of death was the Mets.") And there's real distress in the sight of a humbled, grief-stricken Nelson reeling in defeat; one suddenly has a sense of the tragedy The Other Americans might be. Still, this is a case of a great unruly artist, whose best work has the untamed energy of slam poetry, dedicating himself a little too much to coloring inside the lines. It may well be that The Other Americans is a transitional work, launching Leguizamo on a new career as a dramatist. If he wants to make it happen, I certainly won't bet against him. -- David Barbour 
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