Review: THE HEART SELLERS Sells IN at Horizon Theatre Company

Last weekend, Atlanta's own Horizon Theatre, in conjunction with East by Southeast and Asian American Voices for Education, gave Atlanta the final shows of THE HEART SELLERS by Lloyd Suh and directed by Michelle Chan. This exquisitely tuned play, shaped out of empathy and improbable friendship, reminds us that huge rewards can come from taking the smallest risks. When Divine Timing herself taps you on the shoulder, you say yes—even if it means leaving everything you know and will never know again.

Set on Thanksgiving night, 1973, a year suspended between postwar optimism and the disillusionment of the Nixon era, the play begins with strangers convening over a frozen turkey. By the end, we learn the glaringly profound core of gratitude—hope—born muddy from the depths of colonization, misogyny, survival, connection, and still, a frozen turkey.

Played with overwhelming realism, presence, and compassion, Michelle Pokopac plays Jane, and Jenine Florence Jacinto plays Luna, two immigrant women, one from Korea, one from the Philippines, who come together to do what everyone else is doing on Thanksgiving: eat.  Their instant connection for a shared craving for autonomy, self-actualization and visibility, lasers through multiple layers of cultural barriers and risky novelty in a small, average apartment, while their med-school husbands work last-picked second shifts. What unfolds after the shame of (dare they!) the pleasure of wine and the acceptance of a devastatingly dissatisfactory citizenship, is a kind of fantasy made with equal parts loneliness and joy.

Scenic Designers Moriah & Isabel Curley-Clay, Costume Designer Lauren Driskill, Lighting Designer Mary Parker, Sound Designer Johnathan Taylor, and Props Designer Annabel Sapp holds fast to Horizon’s reputation for expert design and staging, and does not disappoint while bringing to life the play's humanity and intimacy, without cheap sentimentality. The world that's built feels close to time travel, supporting the journey with a perfect landing in a new destination at the end. You can almost see the paths of their futures just as the lights go out. 

Congratulations to this production of THE HEART SELLERS that shares an immigrant experience with a mirror to America itself. It is crafted with such care and accuracy, the most profound moments often come disguised as understated as a gesture, glance, or sigh. These two Everywomen switch between their day-to-day field reports and innocent fantasies as fast as children, and our hearts break a little knowing what's at stake and what price they will unknowingly pay. Under every moment runs a yearning to belong to, no, be chosen, by a country that’s still deciding whether it wants them. Even now, 52 years later. 

Photo: Horizon Theater