‘Heart Sellers’ Is Winning World Premiere

Milwaukee Repertory Theater presents The Heart Sellers in the Stiemke Studio February 7 – March 19, 2023. Pictured: Nicole Javier and Narea Kang. Photo by Michael Brosilow.

There’s something smartly audacious and stirringly theatrical in playwright Lloyd Suh’s concept and the execution of the world premiere of his The Heart Sellers, a comedy with sparks of deeper recognition about the plight of Asian women coming to the United States in the 1970s. It runs through March 19 at the Milwaukee Rep’s lesser known Stiemke Studio, which changes seating setup depending on what’s being staged.

The play was commissioned by the Rep and the company has lavished care on this production, with a working set by Tanya Orellana that reeks of 1970s efficiency urban apartments and a wardrobe by Anthony Tran that quietly reveals volumes about these two housewives who met at a supermarket and impulsively get together for Thanksgiving.

But mainly it is the way director Jennifer Chang and a wonderful pair of actresses new to the Rep — Nicole Javier as Luna from The Philippines and Narea Kang as Jane from South Korea — have coordinated the timing, the trusting details and the transitions from peels of giddy laughter to silent movement to carry us along on a range of insights about what these immigrants have given up to let their husbands (both medical students) pursue the American dream of wealth and career advancement.

Whether they have given up their souls in the process is an immigration story that the audience as well as the characters must contemplate.

Playwright Suh is being audacious in the sense of valuing what actors and director can bring to the theater, how they can find the space to dangle a remarkable number of ornaments on this Thanksgiving tree. It is hard to believe the Rep’s statement in the program that the company saw the possibilities in his early draft. It may be more of a case of knowing the writer from a previous fine production of The Chinese Lady at the Stiemke, given how much this success depends on production and casting elements that grew out of staging it.

The play is almost a thoughtful test pilot for a new sitcom (“Luna and Jane Go to K-Mart”). The babbling loose-tongued Javier runs around her apartment on tippy toes while the more stately Kang with a doll’s face of expressions and somber stolidity unwraps her coat and her feelings more slowly. Each gradually becomes more relaxed with each other about their circumstances and a longing for family and times past.

Suh is clearly insightful about the Asian American plight in America – and has to transfer those insights into the words and bursts of his characters. The Rep is providing the audience with a catchy folder, alongside the program, neatly detailing the history of Asians in America, including the earth-shaking Hart-Celler Act of 1965 (the Heart Sellers of the title) that opened Asian immigration with fewer of the racial and geographical strictures of the past.

But this is not a play that other theaters will leap to without difficulty. This cast and director are extraordinary in making us feel the connections to the characters in terms of how their bodies are controlled and their dialogue allows depth in broken speech.

Suh is again proving the power of alcohol in opening up theater dialogue. From plays by Shakespeare to Eugene O’Neill to Edward Albee, it is amazing how drinking too much (and both these housewives are unaccustomed to the kick of wine) can open up revelations that, by upbringing and decorum, neither would otherwise indulge in.

When they do, Suh unleashes a winning torrent of observations. How in the 1970s Asian wives had no outlet for their feelings about their husband’s egos, about Richard Nixon, about penises, about the strange smell of rain and nature in this new land and whether the heart sellers of the title may actually be them, giving up so much of their personalities to enter this land of material opportunity.

The ideas are important to hear. The characters are wonderful to meet, Luna in her fits of laughter and fantasy, Jane in her slow warming to her own outbursts. Afterward, the audience may realize that good acting and directing have led us down a tricky path of acceptance to concepts not unfolding as naturally as a two-hander acting excursion would normally allow. But what fun it is to go along!

The Heart Sellers Gallery

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Dominique Paul Noth served for decades as film and drama critic, later senior editor for features at the Milwaukee Journal. You’ll find his blogs here and here.