“The Heart Sellers,” newly on South Coast Repertory’s Argyros stage, is a two-character one-act comedy fully heartfelt in a well-acted production, yet one that ultimately beats at a slight, unassuming pace.
Playwright Lloyd Suh’s slice-of-life story — one of a series of plays he has written examining the experiences of Asians in different eras coming to America — is rooted in the alienated lives of two 23-year-old women newly arrived in the early 1970s.
Hunkered down in a dowdy apartment on a frigid Thanksgiving day — their medical resident husbands are absent, working late hours on a hospital’s holiday shift — the duo, one from the Philippines, the other from Korea, spend the play thawing out a frozen turkey and warming to a budding acquaintanceship as they puzzle over the expectations and pitfalls of their lives in a new country.
Narea Kang ,left, and Nicole Javier star in South Coast Repertory’s production of “The Heart Sellers,” playing on the theater’s Argyros Stage through Nov. 16. (Photo by Robert Huskey, SCR) Narea Kang, left, and Nicole Javier star in South Coast Repertory’s production of “The Heart Sellers” by Lloyd Suh. (Photo by Robert Huskey, SCR) Narea Kang ,left, and Nicole Javier star in South Coast Repertory’s production of “The Heart Sellers,” playing on the theater’s Argyros Stage through Nov. 16. (Photo by Robert Huskey, SCR) Narea Kang ,left, and Nicole Javier star in South Coast Repertory’s production of “The Heart Sellers,” playing on the theater’s Argyros Stage through Nov. 16. (Photo by Robert Huskey, SCR) Nicole Javier stars in South Coast Repertory’s production of “The Heart Sellers” by Lloyd Suh. (Photo by Robert Huskey, SCR) Narea Kang stars in South Coast Repertory’s production of “The Heart Sellers” by Lloyd Suh. (Photo by Robert Huskey, SCR) Show Caption1 of 6Narea Kang ,left, and Nicole Javier star in South Coast Repertory’s production of “The Heart Sellers,” playing on the theater’s Argyros Stage through Nov. 16. (Photo by Robert Huskey, SCR) ExpandWhile not a pointed political work about immigration for this superheated moment in American times, “The Heart Sellers” does probe the emotional quandaries which are inevitably part of the immigrant experience.
“The Heart Sellers” title is a play on words: It references the 1965 Hart-Celler act of Congress which among other things broadened legal immigration quotas from Asia, emphasizing skilled workers allowed into the U.S. for countries including the Philippines and South Korea.
But for Luna, a Filipina increasingly gyrating between giddy and mournful after pressing her new Korean friend Jane to join in gulping mug after mug of cheap wine — mounting inebriation largely fuels whatever action this play has — the law may lead to a dubious internalized fate.
“I changed the minute I stepped off the plane,” Luna tells Jane, later noting about Hart-Celler, “It’s not somebody who’s gonna give you a heart, but we’re the heart sellers.
“It’s us, it’s our hearts, and we sell ‘em away.”
In a commission by Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Suh wrote “The Heart Sellers” during the pandemic. A sub-theme running through the work is the toll of isolation in general, heightened by geographic relocation.
In sharing the largesse of Kmart shopping, the annoyances of husbands (and blustering males in general), making life’s biggest decisions as well as their respective love of music and painting, Luna and Jane fend off loneliness through the evening and initiate a burgeoning friendship that one imagines sustaining them going ahead.
Directed by Jennifer Chang, actors Nicole Javier as Luna, and Narea Kang as Jane originated the piece in its 2023 premiere in Milwaukee.
Beyond the modest storyline, the pacing of the emotional ups and downs requires nuance, and Chang is sensitive to and effective at mining the two intelligent characters’ range of expressive realizations, from paused silences to explosive laughter, as they come to know each other’s feelings, and thus, their own.
As Luna, Javier’s effervescent energy is addictive. Hurried speech and abrupt topic changes burst from her and are wedded to a restless physicality that is like welcome sparks firing.
It’s the kind of thoroughly developed characterization that makes it implausible in the moment to envision anyone else in the role. Based in L.A. County, Javier earned a BFA in Theatre Performance at Chapman University and appeared in SCR’s 2020 “Where the Mountain Meets the Moon” so an especially welcome return now in this O.C. staging.
Kang is a terrific fit opposite Javier. Her Jane is a wary visitor to Luna’s apartment, unexpectedly finding herself almost hijacked to experience this Western holiday meal of Thanksgiving (turning out to be a Julia Child acolyte — “I watching all the time” — Jane is the best chance that a meal, or, at least, baked yams, might actually get served).
Jane’s English is not as confident as Luna’s so Kang’s precise and telling facial expressions do the talking for her, especially early on. The actress’s slightly wary glances flit about, eyes widening and narrowing, frowns furrowing and vanishing as she first sizes up Luna and her nonstop energy. Then, finally comfortable, hearty peels of abrupt laughter explode, with the performance blossoming to reveal this character’s deeply felt energies.
Often the case in SCR’s cozier Argyros, the play receives a satisfying production.
Scenic designer Tanya Orellana’s efficient and spartan ’70s living and kitchen space nicely conveys life on a tight budget. The main room’s-tired brown and burnt orange colorings are slightly and suitably depressing while a telling lawn chair to one side underscores the lack of permanence supporting these lives.
Orellana has additionally dialed up another glorious period touch, with the not quite avocado green/not quite mint green oven and refrigerator haunting the cramped, utilitarian kitchen.
Designer Pablo Santiago’s subtle lighting establishes a neutral mood, with heightened and lowered shadings at the appropriate times illuminating a couple of extended monologues each character has.
Currently, as some immigrants’ very existences are under literal assault at the hands of institutional thuggery on the streets, “The Heart Sellers,” despite its storytelling limitations, reminds us that the emotional displacements in simply sustaining lives here can be an ongoing challenge.
‘The Heart Sellers’
Rating: 3 (out of four possible) stars
Where: Argyros Stage, South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Dr., Costa Mesa
When: Though Nov. 16. 7:30 p.m., Wednesday-Friday; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays
Tickets: $85-122.
Information: 714-708-5555; scr.org
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