Queens

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Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Martyna Majok, who has specialized in plays about the immigrant experience like Ironbound and Sanctuary City, has revised her play Queens first seen at the Claire Tow Theater at LCT3 in 2018. The new version now at Manhattan Theatre Club Stage I at New York City Center still with an all-female cast has three fewer characters and is now in two acts instead of three. However, the play, though still powerful and authentic, continues to be confusing as it goes back and forth between scenes in the borough of Queens in 2017, 2001 and 2011, and with two middle scenes set in the Ukraine in 2016. Mostly taking place in the same basement apartment in New York, at one point women from both 2001 and 2017 are on stage simultaneously. It is all a little bit difficult to keep the chronology straight.

The play deals brilliantly with the stories of refugees, all of whom have come to the United States at great risk for different reasons, and some stories we do not find out. Renia has come from Poland to make a better life and send for her daughter. Ukrainian Inna has traveled to the U.S. from the Ukraine in order to find her mother who came almost two decades before and has not been heard from since. Aamani left Afghanistan because her love for another woman was forbidden and she did not want to get her lover in any more trouble. Isabela left Honduras in order to send home money for her mother and daughter but now that her mother is sick and she fears her daughter has forgotten her after seven years, she needs to return home. In the 2011 scene, Glenys, Isabela’s 17-year-old daughter, arrives in order to finish her education. We never do find about why Pelagiya came from Belarus but it is likely to be one of these same stories.

While the timeframes are hard to keep straight and would probably have been better told in chronological order, this will work much better as a movie with the addition of fade outs and cross cutting. The years the play depicts are historically symbolic: 2001 is the year of September 11 when immigrants were receiving the brunt of New Yorkers’ anger at what had happened to the World Trade Center.  Summer 2017 represents the aftermath of President Trump’s first year in office. However, the play seems somewhat dated now in 2025 as it does not take into consideration ICE raids and Federal policies that have changed the landscape of immigration to the U.S.

The women talk of their pasts, their jobs, their home countries, bad experiences both at home and in the US, and the sacrifices they made which usually include the families left behind. They also tell us about items they have found left by previous residents: a box of bras, a box of clocks, a guitar, and they ponder what would make someone abandon them. They discuss their dreams of either sending for family members or going back when they have saved enough money to impress the people back home. However, they often wonder about the sick lady upstairs with first Pelagiya as her caretaker and then when she becomes too feeble to continue, Renia takes over as well as managing the basement downstairs.

The only through line is the story of Renia who arrives from Poland in 2001 and is unable to get in touch with her daughter back home. As she moves up the ranks from immigrant to caretaker to landlady over 16 years, she becomes more and more greedy trying to get her piece of the American Dream. She has two visits from her former roommate Agata both of them giving her unwelcome news from home. Marin Ireland gives a fierce performance as this unlikable woman but we see where she is coming from and her reasons for her greed and over-possessiveness. Under Trip Cullman’s direction she dominates the play even when she is offstage. Unfortunately he has not been able to make the other women stand out as much.

Two other stories run parallel: Julia Lester’s angry Inna who arrives with only a photo of her missing mother standing in front of this very house in Queens but her mother’s visit was before Renia’s time so she cannot get any news. Lester is fiery hot and almost can’t control her temper. And then there is teenage Glenys played by Sharlene Cruz who fools the other women into thinking that she is American. Not only is she convincing as a 17-year- old, but she is wary in the ways of homeless teenagers. Both of these women touch Reina as reincarnations of her missing daughter and benefit from her largesse to them.

Nicole Villamil’s Isabela is amusing as she tries to pack more than her suitcase can hold and becomes very honest with the other women as she sees her time in America coming to an end.  We learn less about Nadine Malouf’s Aamani but watch as Brooke Bloom’s Pelagiya ages badly. As Lera, Andrea Syglowski is Inna’s feisty and realistic roommate back in the Ukraine, while Anna Chlumsky’s Agata, Renia’s former roommate, does very well for herself but only shows up when she wants to berate Renia or dangle unhappy news before her eyes.

Marsha Ginsberg’s basement apartment with its battered mismatched furniture is very atmospheric when combined with Ben Stanton’s moody lighting. However, the rooms do not change much over the 16 years which makes it that much harder to tell time is passing. The characters are defined by Sarah Laux’s costumes which vary from monochromatic outfits to exotic more national clothing brought from the home countries. Mikaal Sulaiman’s sound design is much in evidence from the knocking from the floor above to the crying cat outside the window. J. Jared Janas is responsible for the various hairstyles for the eight women. Jane Guyer Fujita does such a good job with her dialect coaching that it is often difficult to understand the eight women’s separate speech patterns. Fight choreographer Rocio Mendez does an excellent work with the play’s few moments of violence.

Martyna Majok’s revised and tightened version of Queens (previously spelled with a small q) has its heart in the right place and is very enlightening about the lives of immigrant women in New York from 2001 – 2017. Unfortunately, the play’s structure sabotages the plot and message, making it difficult to put the various stories in the correct order. Probably the material needs yet a third version to sort out this confusion.

Queens (extended through December 7, 2025)

Manhattan Theatre Club

New York City Center – Stage I, 131 W. 55^th Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, call 212-239-6200 or visit http://www.QueensThePlay.com

Running time: two hours and 35 minutes including one intermission