The Heart Sellers
Lloyd Suh
TheatreWorks Silicon Valley in Co-Production with Aurora Theatre and Capital Stage
When last year TheatreWorks Silicon Valley received the rights to produce the much-sought-after The Heart Sellers, Artistic Director Giovanna Sardelli learned that two other Northern California companies also hoped to include on their playbill Lloyd Suh’s timely, heart-felt play about recent immigrants. Rather than deny their audiences this opportunity, she invited them into a first-time collaboration between the three companies to co-produce the play, an offer eagerly accepted by Aurora Theatre of Berkeley and Capital Stage of Sacramento.
About two months ago, I attended and reviewed Aurora’s opening of The Heart Sellers, reveling in and much enjoying watching two new immigrants become quick friends as they share in laughter and tears the many ups and downs of their first few months in the new, strange land of the U.S. With the TheatreWorks opening, I had the privilege of seeing the same production with only a few differences overall. TheatreWorks’ Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts is many times larger than the intimate Aurora Stage where audience members are only a few feet away from the action. One of the two actors is now new; and the lighting designer is different. Otherwise, I found the second time around much the same and just as wonderful as the first, with the production working equally well in both small and large theatre settings.
The following is my initial review with a few updates here and there, those that are significant noted in italics. The bulk of the first production’s review applies equally well to the second production.
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Immigrants stand in line to show necessary papers to the waiting officer, who in turn says to each, “Now give me your heart.” Each immigrant digs into their chest to present their heart. The immigrants discover the sad fact that they must sell their hearts to come to America.
Luna, a recent immigrant from the Philippines, knows that she and her husband — a doctor in residence — are in the U.S. in 1973 because of a 1965 law called Hart Celler that prioritizes immigrants with needed skills, refugees, and citizens’ family members, no matter from where they come. (Past immigration laws heavily favored only white Europeans.) Luna relates the above immigration dream to her new friend, Jane (a recent Korean immigrant also with a doctor husband in residence). In this dream, she discovers “this Hart Celler is not somebody who’s going to give you a heart, but we’re the heart sellers … It’s us, our hearts, we sell them away.”
In a joint production with Capital Stage and Aurora Theatre, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley opens Lloyd Suh’s The Heart Sellers where the laughter and tears of Luna and Jane intermingle with those of our own as they share their experiences as recent Asian immigrants. As the two young women who had just met that day at a local Kmart prepare to pop into the oven a still-frozen turkey and two yams wrapped in foil on Thanksgiving evening, 1973, they share their hilarious impressions of this strange new land where even the dust is different from their homelands. But as they laugh, waves of sudden sadness overtake them of all that was left behind — be it smells of rain, sense of safety, or family. The result is a penetrative, delightful, heart-warming, and at times, heart-breaking first-hand glimpse of the immigrant experience.
Nicole Javier and Narea Kang are nothing short than absolutely fabulous as Luna and Jane, their Americanized names respectively, their given names in the Philippines and South Korea being Luningning and Hong Jae Ha. Every minute of the evening’s ninety reveals yet another surprise as each finds a myriad of unexpected, unconventional, and often hilarious ways to share their new-found love of soul music, Jane Fonda, and Easy Cheese on Ritz Crackers as well as their definite despise of Richard Nixon (“He makes me want to make a poo poo”).
Nicole Javier’s Luna is so excited to welcome her first-ever guest that she talks a mile a minute peppered by giggles galore, arms waving, and teeth fully displayed in a smile covering near half her face. Narea Kang’s Jane enters Luna’s apartment looking much like an Alaskan Eskimo as she remains close to the front door all bundled up, often glancing at the door as if to be sure a quick exit will be possible is she needs to escape this constant chatterbox who is dancing all around the strange apartment.
The silent, grunting, barely smiling Jane does begin to show some perk and spark as she offers to use her newly acquired Julia Child expertise (part of her TV education along with Archie Bunker and Sesame Street) to show Luna how to prepare a Thanksgiving dinner for the two of them since their Asian husbands have been required to work on an All-American holiday that neither woman is sure what it is really means. She gains momentum as she breaks pieces of celery and plunges them next to the awaiting, rock-hard bird while literally throwing bits of garlic toward it on its way to the oven, now speaking in a high-toned voice with many tee-hees and twinkly-eyed grins punctuating her broken-English.
Into mugs in the shape of a cow’s and a pig’s head, Luna enthusiastically pours some Lancer’s wine. Both she and Jane turn their heads away and hilariously grimace as they take their first sips of this strange drink, but it does not take too long until both are eagerly sipping and eventually gulping the now-delicious wine.
The wine loosens up the two as their chatter ranges from Luna’s description of her recent honeymoon at Disneyland (“Of course we didn’t go inside … too expensive”) to Jane’s nostalgic childhood memories of American GI’s giving kids chocolates in her hometown in South Korea. A mention of music leads to a mini-dance party, the two mimicking in wildly exaggerated movements the dancing they have seen on “Soul Train.” Subjects of discourse spill from a menu of topics clearly each has carried silently in her head but has never dared shared until now, from stories about their sisters who are Communist to their shared amusement (and physical reenactment) of penis sizes and erections.
As they share stories and memories, their sentences are often broken into stop-and-start pieces as both speak with clipped and sing-song accents searching for English words new and strange. Between them there is no judgment and no embarrassment, only understanding and encouragement. That acceptance is quite different from the reactions they have gotten from Americans. Luna shares, “I don’t feel safe … The things that happen every day to me… the way people, the way they talk, the things they say… the way they look at …”
Out of the blue questions posed by one or the other spark reactions from guffaws of laughter to shouted admonishments for even raising the thought — questions like “Is it what you expected?” or “Should we leave?” Moments of imagining a perfect place to live where kids can run in circles “because it is where they are supposed to be” or of creating the perfect tomorrow where the two new friends can do together all their hearts’ desires provides each actress the avenue to shine in ways that are emotionally stunning, captivating, and insightful.
The raw energy exploding in sudden bursts, the pauses of shared reflection when silence says volumes, the escapes into girl-like giggling and snuggling — so many decisions how to make this powerful script come fully alive have been made by Jennifer Chang as director extraordinaire. Arnel Sancianco’s 70’s-authentic apartment design becomes a playground for the director to let loose the two actresses’ innate abilities to shine forth as they prance on and off furniture, send baked yams flying across the room, or flop with delight on an awaiting couch in sheer and ecstatic exhaustion.
By evening’s too-quick end, so much has both been learned and celebrated about the ups and downs of the immigrant experience via the two curious, creative, and congenial new friends we have met in Lloyd Suh’s The Heart Sellers. With the production recently enjoyed by packed, delighted audiences in Berkeley, now TheatreWorks Silicon Valley beckons the South Bay to Mountain View in order meet and make new friends with Luna and Jane — two immigrants who so powerfully remind us that our country only becomes more enriched when our diversity of backgrounds increases.
Rating: 5 E
A TheatreEddys Best Bet Production
The Heart Sellers continues through April 27, 2025, in a ninety-minute (no intermission) production by TheatreWorks Silicon Valley at the Mountain View Center for Performing Arts, 500 Castro Street, Mountain View California. Tickets are available online at www.theatreworks.org, by email at boxoffice@theatreworks.org, or by phone Tuesday – Sunday, noon to 6 p.m. at 1-877-662-TWSV (8978).
Photo Credit: Alessandro Mello
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