Review: THE HEART SELLERS at Studio Theatre

“How can you trust everything will turn out good when everything is so different?” Luna asks Jane. Philosophically rich and hilariously moving, Studio Theatre’s THE HEART SELLERS is a beautiful homage to a generation of immigrants.

THE HEART SELLERS is set ten years after the passage of the Hart-Celler Act, which encouraged skilled labor from abroad to come to the U.S. On a cold Thanksgiving in 1973, the bubbly and vivacious Luna (Francesca Fernandez), an immigrant from the Philippines, bumps into a timid Jane (Jeena Yi), a South Korean immigrant, at the grocery store. Overwhelmingly excited by having met another immigrant like her in the U.S., Luna immediately asks Jane to come over and join her for dinner, which Jane accepts. At Luna’s apartment, they bond over the loneliness of being so isolated and so relieved at knowing there is someone here who understands. Over wine, they talk about their connections to home, what their everyday lives are like, and how they got here.

Francesca Fernandez shows incredible depth and range in her portrayal of Luna. Fernandez is a talented performer especially with regard to her command of the audience’s emotional engagement. At the same time, it is admirable the way Jeena Yi (Jane) expresses Jane’s initial shyness to the interaction that grows into comfortable familiarity with Luna. Yi deserves special credit for her use of subtle expressions to convey Jane’s thoughts and feelings in a way that adds further insight into her life.

Beyond the dialogue, there is so much that is unspoken yet so clearly conveyed in the thoughts, visible emotional states, and the actions of Luna and Jane. Despite their differences in personality, Luna and Jane are living parallel lives which is well displayed in Fernandez and Yi’s acting.

THE HEART SELLERS is a show that takes place at a specific moment in time, a singular evening, rather than telling a story about a character’s life. Instead, playwright Lloyd Suh prefers to reveal the lives of Jane and Luna through their imaginative dreams, off-the-cuff jokes, and reactions to the still frozen turkey. Despite these very sobering and difficult conversations, THE HEART SELLERS is funny in a way that elevates Luna and Jane's growing friendship, but also makes the weight of serious moments that much heavier.

It is intriguing how although the characters owe their presence to a government policy, the show focuses on the way the policy has altered Luna and Jane’s lives rather than the policy itself. It is impossible not to realize the similarities and differences of the time when compared with our own.

The stage breathes, in some cases, feeling as broad and expansive as the joy Luna and Jane feel knowing they are seen and understood, but at other times feeling cramped and oppressive in a way that ebbs and flows with the subjects being discussed. Studio Theatre is definitely the best venue for this particular show allowing the size of the theatre.

Written by Lloyd Suh and directed by Studio Theatre’s Danilo Gambini, THE HEART SELLERS is profoundly unmatched and viscerally beautiful. Running now through October 26th, THE HEART SELLERS is approximately 90 minutes with no intermission.