Young Americans is a bit like a mystery tour. You never quite know where it’s going dramatically, but the ride getting there — wherever there is — soon becomes a deeply affecting immersion in the inner lives of three immigrants who come to seem as familiar as family.
Don’t let the word immigrant mislead you. This is not a pegged-to-headlines ICE exposé. This is not a Big Issue docudrama about being documented or not. This is a theater work entirely else. In a piquant twist, playwright Lauren Yee (she of Cambodian Rock Band renown) has deliberately not specified the home countries of her three fascinating immigrant characters — Joe, Jenny, and Lucy, their daughter. As scripted, their national origins are generic. Lee leaves it to the production’s casting process to fill that factor in.
This is not to say the play’s one-size-fits-all immigrant angle is specious or simplistic. To the contrary, leaving the characters’ backstories a blank slate foregrounds an immigrant experience of seeking life, love, security, and home that uncannily echoes with universality even for those born here. And my oh my, does the resonance of their U.S. experience come as a surprise.
The plot structure could not be more straightforward: it is about cross-country navigation and family-relationship revelation. The year is 2006, and Joe, an adjunct professor at a state college in Portland, Oregon, has returned to the States having met a woman in their unnamed home country whom he wants and hopes to marry. Her name is Jenny, and he has come to pick her up at Washington Dulles Airport, from whence they set out on a drive to their new home in Portland. His explanation/rationalization: “The best way to speed up any relationship is to go on a trip together…”
Twenty years later, in 2026, Joe is back at Dulles, picking up a young woman named Lucy. She is Joe and Jenny’s 19-year-old adopted daughter, whose country of birth was different from theirs. She has been back in that country for a year abroad and is flying home to Portland. Joe, however, has canceled her connecting flights without her foreknowledge, intending to take a road trip with her, following the exact same DC-to-Portland route Joe took with Jenny 20 years before.
In 18 swift scenes, playwright Yee cuts back and forth between these two twin itineraries, thus setting up an endlessly engaging braiding of two story lines into one. Though the literal geographic destination is precise, Portland, the play’s evocative dramaturgy wends its way rather randomly as the characters banter, chit-chat, and share feelingly with no apparent throughline purpose except to get to know each other.
What stands out in this show is that the director and cast have gifted the script with breathtaking emotional presence and moment-to-moment grounding. Director Nikki Mirza has created on stage a sense of wide-open road and wide-open hearts; actors Jasmine Joy Brooks (Jenny), Shawn Sebastian Naar (Joe), and Surasree Das (Lucy) have found depths of feeling such as one always longs for theater to convey. Brooks starts off the play with a cryptic poetic prologue, the gripping emotional gravitas of which her Jenny stays true to throughout; Naar, in the driver’s seat on both road trips, deftly switches between Joe’s 20-year-apart ages, whether the solicitiously amorous fiancé or the sincerely trying father; and Das as Lucy brings a delightful teen vitality and spirited independence. (In costuming, styling, and accent, this production construes the characters’ countries of origin as Lucy being from India and Jenny and Joe being from Haiti.)
To accommodate the story’s many stretches of highway and stops along the way, Debra Kim Sivigny’s abstract set assembles swooping power lines, a roadway into the distance, and an assortment of mint-green shapes, some of which become the car and some projection screens.
The projections by Sophie Smrcka set the successive scenes, for instance, with birds in flight (Joe is a birder) and fast-food signage. Lighting by Emily Pan and sound by Adam Mendelson both contribute to the momentum, and in between scenes, popular music and the cast’s own fun dance moves further propel the pace
I’ve mentioned little about what we actually learn about the family drama that unfolds in Young Americans, and that’s because, in my estimation, it’s meant to happen on stage in non-continuous fragments, then fall into place and cohere as a whole in each audience member’s mind, with whatever family frame of reference we bring. We are invited to follow these family members’ self-discovery with a “find yourself” motif (“you should choose every day of your life, for yourself” as Jenny tells Lucy in their scene together). That’s the beauty of this gem. As the characters find themselves, we find them.
Running Time: Approximately 90 minutes with no intermission.
Young Americans plays through April 26, 2025, at 1st Stage, 1524 Spring Hill Road, Tysons, VA. General admission tickets are $55, with a limited availability at $40 and $25, and student, educator, and military tickets are $15. Tickets can be purchased online or by calling (703) 854-1856.
The program for Young Americans is online here.
Young Americans
Written by Lauren Yee
Directed by Nikki Mirza
FEATURING
Jasmine Joy Brooks: Jenny
Shawn Sebastian Naar: Joe
Surasree Das: Lucy
PRODUCTION AND DESIGN
Costume Design: Paris Francesca
Scenic Design: Debra Kim Sivigny
Props Design: Erica Bass
Lighting Design: Emily Pan
Sound Design: Adam Mendelson
Dialect Coach: Pascale Armand
Stage Manager: Sarah Usary
Associate Scenic Design/Projections Design: Sophie Smrcka
Intimacy Coordinator: Lorraine Ressegger-Slone
Assistant Stage Manager: Terrence Griffin
Associate Artistic Director: Deidra Lawan Starnes
Artistic Director: Alex Levy
