From Pulitzer Prize winner Martyna Majok (Cost of Living, Sanctuary City) comes an epic drama about hunting for the American Dream, finding family, and facing the ghosts you left behind. In an illegal basement apartment in Queens, multiple generations of immigrant women fight to launch a new life. But when a young Ukrainian woman comes searching for the mother who abandoned her years ago, she forces a reckoning with the impossible choices the women made to survive. Directed by Trip Cullman (We Had A World, Choir Boy), Queens chronicles the strivers who sacrificed whole worlds for the chance at something remarkable.
Save for the opening scene, in which one character punches another in the face, there's not a lot of capital-A Action in Queens. It's a talky play, but the vivid ensemble, under Trip Cullman's direction, gives every conversation a propulsive energy. Their unspoken ambitions and regrets thrum beneath every word they do say. Not every character gets explored in equal depth, and we don't learn how they all got there or where they all go when their time in the apartment comes to and end. But it's a testament to Majok, Cullman, and the cast that we long to know, to ever more deeply understand these women otherwise forced to hide away.
While “Queens” casts unsparing light on the experience of the women in America, Ms. Majok is hardly sentimental about what they left behind. Emblematic are scenes set in Ukraine in 2016, with Inna and her American-husband-hunting friend Lera (Andrea Syglowski) discussing the unpromising futures in their country.
| 2025 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
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