‘The Heart Sellers’ review: The loneliness of immigrants

The issue of immigration has been front and center on our stages this fall. Playwrights are responding not to the headlines (drama plays the long game) but to the human toll of entrenched prejudices and legislative negligence that have turned American politics into a blood sport.

Jocelyn Bioh’s “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” which ends its run at the Mark Taper Forum on Sunday, and Rudi Goblen’s “littleboy/littleman,” which had its world premiere at the Geffen Playhouse last month, bring us closer to characters who came to the U.S. for opportunity and find themselves trapped in a bureaucratic nightmare that has relegated them to the shadows of their adopted homeland.

Adding to this list of immigrant-themed work this season is Lloyd Suh’s “The Heart Sellers,” which opened last weekend at South Coast Repertory. The production is directed by Jennifer Chang, who staged the play’s world premiere at Milwaukee Repertory Theatre in 2023 with the same two-person cast.

Nicole Javier and Narea Kang reprise their roles in a drama that, like Suh’s “The Far Country” (a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2023), views the hot-button issue of immigration through the lens of history. The play, set in 1973 in an unnamed midsize American city, revolves around two women, one from the Philippines, the other from South Korea, who are part of the wave of Asian immigration that was made possible by the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, colloquially known as Hart-Celler after Sen. Philip Hart and Rep. Emanuel Celler who co-sponsored the bill.

A helpful program note by dramaturg Adrian Trujillo Centeno explains that the law eliminated “the national origins quota system that had favored Northern and Western Europeans since the 1920s.” But President Lyndon B. Johnson, who signed the legislation, didn’t foresee how “this well-intentioned reform would trigger one of the most dramatic demographic transformations in American history while simultaneously facilitating new forms of discrimination that persist today.”

The new immigration criteria set out to be more neutral (family reunification and professional skills), but improvements in one area led to difficulties in another. Human beings are infinitely more various than administrative categories.

Luna (Javier) and Jane (Kang) are both married to men who are medical residents at the same hospital. But their dependent status prohibits their employment, casting them into the murky role of supportive yet alienated spouses who have had to relinquish more than their full foreign names.

Set on Thanksgiving night, “The Heart Sellers” can’t disguise its artificial setup. Luna has invited Jane back to her apartment after running into her at the supermarket while whimsically picking up a frozen turkey she hasn’t a clue how to cook. The two women — complete strangers, for all intents and purposes — are jittery around each other until they discover how much they have in common.

Both their husbands work at night, leaving them alone to brood on all they have left behind. Loneliness is endemic to their lives, and Luna, an ebullient personality, seems to be suffering from acute cabin fever.

She’s so eager to make a friend that she acts completely “goofy,” as she herself eventually acknowledges. Jane, whose timidity is evident in the way she only reluctantly takes off her winter coat, behaves as though she’s been abducted by an overly solicitous kidnapper.

Suh’s mission here is similar to that of Bioh’s and Goblen’s in their respective plays: to humanize characters whose lives have been cruelly politicized. The problem with “The Heart Sellers” is that Luna and Jane are saddled with a contrived premise that doesn’t allow them sufficient room for dramatic complexity.

They eat processed snacks, open a bottle of wine and prepare the turkey with paltry ingredients and Jane’s Julia Child ingenuity. As they grow more comfortable in each other’s company, they share stories of their previous lives and the emotional sacrifices they have had to conceal. (The title tips off the Faustian bargain that immigration entails.)

Another bottle of wine and the women completely let their hair down. Having been pent up for so long, friendless and homesick, they go wild in the safety of Luna’s generic apartment, which scenic designer Tanya Orellana furnishes with makeshift graduate school touches. A carton serves as an end table and a lawn chair makes no apologies for itself in the living area. This home is clearly a pit stop.

The women dream up dissolute scenarios for themselves as they dance themselves into a frenzy and drop their facades. It turns out there’s quite a bit of sadness behind Luna’s bubbliness and a good deal of steel underneath Jane’s docile demeanor.

But Suh relies on comic stereotypes to sustain dramatic momentum. The lack of consequential action forces the playwright’s hand, and the characters leave a strained impression that’s exacerbated by the performers.

“The Far Country,” in which Suh examines the harsh realities of Chinese immigrants in San Francisco during the Chinese Exclusion Act era, is a far more complicated piece, raising questions about moral action in an immoral system. “The Heart Sellers” embodies historical material that’s every bit as significant, but the play’s narrow scope diminishes the impact of this sweet yet theatrically unconvincing Thanksgiving visit.