Small pleasures abound in Suh’s ‘The Heart Sellers’

By Rich Fahey

BOSTON – It is a history lesson, and a deceptively simple story about making your way as an immigrant in your new home, while also treasuring your ties for the home you left behind.

The two 23-year-old women portrayed in The Huntington’s production of Lloyd Suh’s “The Heart Sellers” —  a Filipina named Luna (Jenna Agbayani) and Jane (Judy Song), an immigrant from Korea — connect in a grocery store and quickly find common ground, aside from their matching winter coats from Kmart.

The title is a play on the Hart-Celler Immigration Act of 1965, a law that reduced immigration barriers for people from outside Northern Europe. It is a deeply personal work for playwright Suh and director May Adrales, who found that both of their mothers arrived in the U.S, in their 20s, with Adrales’s parents coming from the Philippines and Suh’s from Korea, both thanks to the Hart-Celler Act.

“The Heart Sellers” takes place on that most American of holidays – Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 22, 1973 — in an unnamed city, where a bubbly Luna invites the more reserved Jane into her apartment. Luna can hardly contain her excitement at meeting a fellow Asian-American.

As they celebrate Thanksgiving with a stubborn frozen turkey, yams and a couple of bottles of wine, they help each other fill the void of the loneliness they feel in their new home. But they are also dreaming of Disneyland, disco dancing and freedoms that as women wouldn’t be possible in their home countries.

They find that even though they aren’t from the same country and don’t share the same language, they do share much more than the same winter jackets. Each is not only a recent immigrant, but a bit homesick and lonely with hardworking absentee husbands and adjusting to a new country filled with new opportunities.

They feel the push and pull of trying to connect with their new home. They have left their native lands in turmoil and arrive in a new place which is also in crisis, still feeling the effects of the Kennedy Assassination a decade before, and in the midst of Nixon’s Watergate saga.

There is humor as we learn Jane has sharpened her cooking skills by watching Julia Child and is ready – maybe not — to tackle the turkey. TV, as often happens for lonely immigrants still learning the language and customs, is their constant companion.

Luna is still talking nonstop, but the wine loosens things up, the conversation becomes two-way, humor abounds, and Jane feels free to bare her soul. They find comfort in donning “home clothes,” or pajamas.

Decrying the restraints placed on them by their former cultures, they marvel  at — and wonder about — the scary sides of their new freedoms. There’s talk of disco dancing or – gasp! — seeing a porno movie.

The play is not only deeply personal for both Suh and Adrales, but others such as dramaturg Christine Mok, another child of the Hart-Celler Act, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from South Korea in 1974. Looking at photos of the three sets of parents – hers, Suh’s and Adrales’s – she is “filled with awe at their courage” and says “I will only ever know a sliver of their pain and sacrifice.”

In his program notes. Suh said he did not set out to write a story about immigrant women. “I am writing a play about my mother.”

“The Heart Sellers,” which runs through Dec. 23 in the Calderwood Pavilion of the Boston Center for the Arts, is a series of small pleasures, artfully constructed and acted, a reminder that the immigrant’s journey – no matter what the circumstances – is never easy.

It is a worthy tribute to pioneers such as Suh’s and Andrade’s parents who, after it was finally possible to come, did come and pave the way for the many millions who eventually followed.

The Huntington production of “The Heart Sellers.” Written by Lloyd Suh. Directed by May Adrales. Scenic and costume design by Junghyun Georgia Lee; lighting design by Kat C. Zhou; sound design by Fabian Obispo; and hair and makeup design by Rachel Padula-Shufelt. At The Calderwood Pavilion of the Boston Center for the Arts through Dec. 23. Huntingtontheatre.org