‘QUEENS’: (Left to right) Marin Ireland, Nadine Malouf, Nicole Villamil & Brooke Bloom. Photo: Valerie Terranova.

QUEENS
By Martyna Majok
Directed by Trip Cullman
Through December 7, 2025
Manhattan Theatre Club
NY City Center Stage I
131 West 55th Street
https://www.manhattantheatreclub.com/

By Scott Harrah

Martyna Majok’s Queens has returned Off-Broadway in a reworked, deeply moving production directed by Trip Cullman. Set in an illegal basement apartment in Queens, the play explores the intersecting lives of immigrant women from across the globe.  These women come from Poland, Ukraine, Afghanistan, and beyond. All the women are struggling to survive in America while reckoning with the past they left behind.

The story

Queens spans from 2001 to 2017 and follows a group of immigrant women from around the world who share the same cramped space while struggling to build new lives in America. When a young Ukrainian woman named Inna (Julia Lester) arrives searching for her estranged mother, she stirs up painful memories and forces the others—particularly Renia (Marin Ireland), the Polish landlord of sorts—to confront the choices and sacrifices they’ve made in pursuit of safety, dignity, and belonging. The women’s stories unfold through shifting timelines and layered interactions, creating a poignant mosaic of survival, identity, and the costs of the American Dream.

Martyna Majok’s unsentimental script examines what it means to build a new life in an unfamiliar place while leaving another one behind. Each character’s story adds texture to the collective immigrant experience, and as the play toggles between 2001 and 2017, the audience witnesses how time, loss, and reinvention shape each woman’s path.

Outstanding ensemble cast

Stage veteran Marin Ireland anchors the production with her remarkable portrayal of Renia, a Polish immigrant whose stoic strength masks deep emotional scars. Ms. Ireland’s mastery of dialects and nuance brings authenticity to every line. Equally compelling is Anna Chlumsky as Agata, whose realism and quiet heartbreak elevate the play’s emotional core. Nadine Malouf gives a particularly poignant performance as Aamani, an Afghan woman whose memories of surviving Taliban oppression and her identity as a woman and a lesbian lend the show moments of haunting despair.

Trip Cullman directs with his usual sensitivity and precision, keeping the pacing tight despite the script’s complex, time-jumping structure. The dialogue occasionally becomes dense and obtuse, especially in scenes where the women speak in thick accents or other languages, making it hard to follow at times. Still, Ms. Majok’s reworked script (originally staged in 2018) is much improved — clearer, more cohesive, and thematically resonant in today’s political climate.

Relevant in modern-day America

For a drama steeped in heavy themes, Queens never drags. Its honesty about immigration, sacrifice, and female resilience feels especially urgent and topical in 2025 America. The result is an affecting, beautifully acted piece of theater that stays with you long after the lights go down.

Published November 6, 2025
Reviewed at press performance on October 30, 2025

‘QUEENS’: Marin Ireland & Anna Chlumsky. Photo: Valerie Terranova.

‘QUEENS’: (Clockwise from top left): The cast; Brooke Bloom & Nadine Malouf; Anna Chulmsky; Julia Lester & Marin Ireland. Photos: Valerie Terranova.

‘QUEENS’: Marin Ireland & Sharlene Cruz. Photo: Valerie Terranova.

‘QUEENS’: (top) Julia Lester; (bottom) Andrea Syglowski. Photos: Valerie Terranova.

‘QUEENS’: Nicole Villamil & Marin Ireland. Photo: Valerie Terranova.

‘QUEENS’: Nadine Malouf, Nicole Villamil, Marin Ireland & Brooke Bloom. Photo: Valerie Terranova.

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‘MORNING SUN’: Blair Brown & Marin Ireland. Photo: Matthew Murphy.

MORNING SUN
Written by Simon Stephens
Directed by Lila Neugebauer
Through December 19, 2021
Manhattan Theatre Club
New York City Center Stage
1
131 West 55th Street
(212-581-1212), www.NYCityCenter.org

By David NouNou

Morning Sun by playwright Simon Stephens captures the essence of the 1952 painting “Morning Sun” by artist Edward Hopper. The painting is of a woman in a pink slip, sitting on a bed staring outside her window, at the city. The Playbill lists the three women in Mr. Stephens’ play anonymously as 1, 2 and 3. Like the painting, these women live an abstract life, almost Bohemian in nature. However, as the play progresses, the abstract shifts to isolation and survival in the city.

At the onset in the dark, 1 (Edie Falco) keeps asking “is it safe, am I safe?” and the voices reply “you’re doing just fine, everything is okay.” It poses the question is 1 in labor giving birth—or is it at another stage of her life? As the lights come on, we learn that 2 (Blair Brown) has come to the city in 1947 and just got a two-bedroom apartment in Greenwich Village for $75.00 a month while working at Macy’s. 2/Claudette gets married, and her husband moves into this apartment and they have a long marriage. 2/Claudette gives birth to 1/Charlotte, which takes us back to the beginning, was it safe for 1 to come into the world or is it another stage of her life.

1/Charlotte prefers the name Charley and lives in the same Village apartment as her parents. She doesn’t ask much of life. She has a best friend as a child, but is betrayed by her as an adult. She gets pregnant from a one-night stand with a pilot, and gives birth to a girl, 3 (Marin Ireland) and she names her Tessa. 1 has a 10-year relationship with a semi-abusive man who leaves her for another woman. She works at St. Vincent’s Hospital until it shuts down. She ultimately meets Edwin, a medical supplies salesman, with whom she moves out with to Colorado.

3/Tessa has a difficult life, no real father; just father figures. She lives with her mother and grandparents in the same Village apartment. She has a tough time whether coping in school, in her childhood, with her job, and when her mother decides to move to Colorado.

1, 2 and 3 play multiple characters, both men and women, thus the abstract, but they essentially play mother, daughter and granddaughter who love each other but have a tough time connecting. They represent the strong willed, the survivor, and the loner. They are connected but all three women live in isolation. The beauty here is the seamless connection these women portray. They are three separate women but can speak as one.

Edie Falco gives a gut-wrenching performance as 1/daughter and survivor. In lesser hands, the character might seem a loser; however, Ms. Falco imbues Charlotte with every noble quality a woman can possess. Blair Brown, as 2/mother and strong willed, is fearless. Like a great wine, she gets better with age and experience. Marin Ireland, as 3/granddaughter/loner and a multiple array of other characters, is becoming one of the finest actresses of her generation. She has grown as an actress from her earlier outings in reasons to be pretty  and The Three Sisters. Her Tessa is heartbreaking and her switching from one character to another is seamless.

Simon Stephens has written a lovely abstract play about the connection of three generations of women.  Director Lila Neugebauer gives everything focus, but Edie Falco, Blair Brown and Marin Ireland give the show its pulsating heart.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published November 3, 2021
Reviewed at October 30, 2021 press preview performance.

‘MORNING SUN’: Edie Falco & Marin Ireland. Photo: Matthew Murphy.

‘MORNING SUN’: Edie Falco & Marin Ireland. Photo: Matthew Murphy.

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‘HAPPY TALK’: Marin Ireland & Susan Sarandon. Photo: Monique Carboni

HAPPY TALK
Written by Jesse Eisenberg
Directed by Scott Elliott
Through June 16, 2019
The New Group at the Pershing Square Signature Center
The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
480 West 42nd Street
(212-279-4200), http://www.TheNewGroup.org

By David NouNou

I was so intrigued by Jesse Eisenberg’s last play The Spoils, presented by the New Group in 2015 (also performed at this same theatre and directed by Scott Elliott), that I really looked forward to his next show. Mr. Eisenberg can never be accused of lacking imagination when it comes to his play writing. So for his current venture Happy Talk, he has Lorraine (Susan Sarandon), a suburban New Jersey housewife, rehearsing to play Bloody Mary in the Jewish Community Center production of South Pacific. Well, the premise right there is a hoot. However, Lorraine is saddled by a bed-ridden dying mother who is never seen; a pain-riddled husband, Bill (Daniel Oreskes) who is mainly seated quietly and reading his papers in his recliner; and an estranged daughter, Jenny (Tedra Millian). Throughout all this mayhem, there is a savior, the Serbian immigrant aide Ljuba (Marin Ireland). Ljuba tends to the dying mother, the ailing husband, and especially to Lorraine, who is in constant need of validation.

After six months of working for this family, Ljuba asks Lorraine for a favor. She is here illegally from Serbia and wonders if Lorraine, who works with so many people in her theatrical community, can find her a husband that she can buy with the $15,000 she has saved in order to get her green card. Lorraine does a great job of matchmaking and brings home Ronny (Nico Santos). Ronny plays Lt. Cable in South Pacific. He is gay, Asian, and has a partner and both are in desperate need of money, so Ronny is willing to comply.

The set-up in part one is amusing, the second part is hysterical and witty, but the third part becomes Mr. Eisenberg’s now formulaic, five-character nihilism as it was in The Spoils.

Mr. Eisenberg could have had a wonderful comedy, the likes of Neil Simon. It could have been something totally different for him and very entertaining for the times in which we live, but he chose to stick to his now trademark dark themes. His Lorraine is a wonderful eccentric character like so many wannabes who never made it in real life as a professional actress but delude themselves that they bring extra character to the part they are playing when the part already has all the essentials the character needs. Susan Sarandon is a superb actress, and as Lorraine, she not only embodies delusional and is loved by all, but also can deliver devious and crazy like no one else. She makes Lorraine a terrifying experience for anyone who works in community theatre.

In Happy Talk, Marin Ireland captivates us from the onset. Eccentric? Yes, but in the best sense, upbeat in a sort of Gilda Radner way as Lisa Lubner, or Roseanne Roseannadanna (from the early seasons of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live”), perfectly charming, and delivering a sensitive, heartbreakingly authentic performance to be counted among the best of the year.

If you liked Nico Santos in last year’s mega-hit movie Crazy Rich Asians, you’ll adore him here. As if being gay and Asian, playing the all-American Lt. Joe Cable in South Pacific isn’t enough, he wants to give Joe a limp to add character, and that concept itself is a scream. He is the perfect remedy for what is about to unfold.

Jesse Eisenberg has written a good play and Scott Elliott has directed it in an adroit manner, but both have already explored similar territory because The Spoils also featured a protagonist who turned into an antagonist and became a nihilist. With Happy Talk, Mr. Eisenberg and Mr. Elliott have both rehashed things from their previous collaboration. However, I still recommend the play highly just to witness thoroughly engaging performances from Marin Ireland, Susan Sarandon and Nico Santos.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published May 16, 2019
Reviewed at May 12, 2019 press preview performance.

‘HAPPY TALK’: (left to right) Daniel Oreskes, Nico Santos, Susan Sarandon & Marin Ireland. Photo: Monique Carboni

‘HAPPY TALK’: (left to right) Susan Sarandon, Marin Ireland & Nico Santos. Photo: Monique Carboni

‘HAPPY TALK’: (left to right) Daniel Oreskes, Susan Sarandon & Nico Santos. Photo: Monique Carboni

‘HAPPY TALK’: (left to right) Marin Ireland, Susan Sarandon & Tedra Millan. Photo: Monique Carboni

‘HAPPY TALK’: (left to right) Susan Sarandon, Marin Ireland & Tedra Millan. Photo: Monique Carboni

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SOAPY, DATED DRAMA: Marin Ireland (left) & Bobby Cannavale in ‘The Big Knife’. Photo: Joan Marcus

THE BIG KNIFE
Written by Clifford Odets
Directed by Doug Hughes

American Airlines Theatre

227 West 42nd Street

(212-719-1300), www.RoundaboutTheatre.org

By David NouNou

Platitudes are bandied around at a dizzying pace in this first revival of Clifford Odets’ 1949 play, The Big Knife. Having lived in Hollywood and written screenplays out there, I’m sure Odets got wind of a lot of the cover-ups that existed in Tinsel Town and the major studios. In the heyday of the studio system, moguls like Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner, Darryl F. Zanuck, etc., had enough publicity henchmen to protect their most valuable assets, “the movie star.” Be it abortions, accidents, drunken binges, extramarital affairs, divorce, dare I say homosexuality in Hollywood, and yes, even murder, they had the PR departments working overtime, concealing all the dirty laundry. They could even get a flunky to take a murder rap if the star was big enough

Such a star is Charlie Castle (Bobby Cannavale), for he is his studio’s biggest moneymaker; and in a drunken binger one night, he ran over a child. In order to protect his image, the studio boss Marcus Huff (Richard Kind) and his publicity man Smiley Coy (Reg Rogers) manage to pin the charges on Charlie’s friend, Buddy Bliss (Joey Slotnick), who went to jail and kept Charlie’s image perfectly clean. Yes, studios had the power and the means to do such cover-ups. Forget about today’s “hot mess” starlets and their tabloid-addled lives; these are small potatoes compared to murder.

To further complicate Charlie’s life, his estranged wife Marion (Marin Ireland), whom Charlie claims he loves very much, despite his drinking and womanizing, will only come back to him if he doesn’t sign his new $3.5 million-dollar contract with options because she wants to leave Hollywood and move back to New York and the “theater” to get away from all the muck and mire. However, the catch here is that Charlie is bound to the studio for the cover-up they did for him and the new contract stipulates another 14 years of servitude. Oh, the dilemma.

Of course such events/cover-ups were real, just read Hollywood Babylon and you’ll see the dirty laundry of some of your favorite stars. The set-up of The Big Knife is certainly interesting. After all, it deals with Hollywood and its tawdry goings-on. However, the dialogue is so stilted that it would confound the most ardent of Odets fans. Could he really have written such unconvincing, banal lines? At times, it seems like homilies being strewn from the stage.

The highest point of this production is the gorgeous set designed by John Lee Beatty. My God, I would have loved to live in it. Now to the assets of the show: Bobby Cannavale, who usually explodes on stage; was electric in The Motherf***ker with the Hat a couple of seasons ago and great in last fall’s revival of Glengarry, Glen Ross, seems ill at ease here. Must be those silted lines he has to spout and the fact that he lacks any chemistry with the woman he loves, Marin Ireland. You see no connection between them. There is no passion or love in her delivery, and she performs her role in a one-dimensional manner.

I am glad to report that there are four wonderful supporting performances: Richard Kind, who is usually in comedies, is absolutely great as the hell-bent, venomous studio mogul explaining his motives and the savagery that takes place in the third act with Charlie, and finally gets the play to crackle, but what ensues soon turns to the mawkish. Reg Rogers as the studio publicity man is wonderfully reptilian; two other affecting performances are from Chip Zien as Charlie’s agent; and Joey Slotnick as his friend who took the rap.

It’s not that the show doesn’t have interesting moments, it does, but the dialogue is so hackneyed and preachy that it turns the proceedings into one big, melodramatic soap opera. It’s not up to par to the earlier revival of Odets’ Golden Boy, with the same type of tortured characters. but with much better lines.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published April 19, 2013

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