The Queens-raised Colombian American entertainer John Leguizamo has built a decades-long stage career writing and performing in solo comedies that explore immigrant identity and spread his fast-talking charisma over several roles. That knack for fleshing out specific, believable characters drives the best of “The Other Americans,” his first formal play, which opened Thursday night at the Public Theater, in association with Arena Stage, where it premiered last year.
The play has an ideal director in Ruben Santiago-Hudson, another New York theater maker well versed in sensitive studies of Black and brown lives. It takes the shape of the classic American family drama, greatly inspired by “A Raisin in the Sun,” and if Leguizamo stumbles a bit, blinded by that masterpiece’s legacy, he is at least staring up in the right direction.
Here he is Nelson, a Colombian American laundromat owner awaiting his son’s return from a stay at a psychiatric facility. His wife, Patti (Luna Lauren Velez, luminous), has cooked up a homecoming feast of plantains and pernil, nostalgic for the Latin flavor of their original Jackson Heights neighborhood in Queens. While she mourns the lack of racial diversity in Forest Hills, where they’ve upgraded to a detached house from a cramped apartment, he doesn’t miss living, he spits out, “like we was immigrants.”
A born striver, Nelson is all about upward mobility, hyping up some possible deal with a real estate mogul whose reputation for ripping off minorities he admires. Patti is more attuned to the family’s well-being. Somewhere in between that gap are their daughter, Toni (Rebecca Jimenez), who is soon to marry the dorky Eddie (Bradley James Tejeda), and the younger Nick.
Making the production a true family affair, Nick is played by Trey Santiago-Hudson, the director’s son, acing his first major stage role. It’s a tricky part, too: A social butterfly back in Jackson Heights, Nick was the victim of a racially motivated hate crime near their new place, which pushed his psyche over the edge and interrupted his college plans. Though stable, his hard-won calm is betrayed by jerky tics and near-fainting spells.
Nelson is too macho to properly care for his son’s newfound softness. The character is often constricted by the stage patriarchs before him, immediately telegraphing the tragic masculinity of a Walter Younger (“Raisin”) or a Willy Loman (“Death of a Salesman”) and rarely stepping off that antihero treadmill onto a genuine journey. That he and his family will soon be undone by his myopic pursuit of the American dream is a foregone conclusion.
Obvious signposts — like Nelson’s drinking, or constant references to the aboveground pool he has installed as a present for Nick, but really as a status symbol — obscure the play’s emotional subtleties. Luckily, Leguizamo is a magnetic performer, and it’s a treat to witness his evident gameness for playing a character in such a lineage.
The other characters are far better developed, and the cast, which also includes Rosa Evangelina Arredondo and Sarah Nina Hayon as Nelson’s half sister and Patti’s best friend, appealingly understand their world and dynamics. When they’re allowed to riff off each other, the play sings.
The physical production is also a lived-in delight. Arnulfo Maldonado’s home-interior set engulfs the thrust stage, well appointed and enveloped by a backyard and driveway. The costumes, by Kara Harmon, are both thoughtful and, thanks to the old-school Nokia cellphone strapped to Eddie’s belt, the only hint that the story takes place, for some reason, in 1998.
It’s the claim the play emphatically stakes toward the national canon that makes it falter, beginning with its title, which promises either a sweeping thesis or a mic drop. “The Other Americans” is neither, and that’s OK. It’s a relief that a story about a Latino family can be created today — its racial, social and personal complexities fully tended to — without overly relying on identity signifiers or speechifying.
The cultural specificity in Leguizamo’s work is airtight, and in his first effort at writing for a full cast, he clears two important hurdles: a good ear for dialogue and an understanding that everyone needs strong intentions. His career has long established him as an insightful American artist, so to succeed in this new field, he should only trust in his uniqueness.
The Other Americans
Through Oct. 19 at the Public Theater, Manhattan; publictheater.org. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes.
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