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The first image of the play is a girl on a fire escape.
Shes cold and anxious to get inside; the boy helps her climb through his window.
Martyna MajoksSanctuary Citycontains other romances, other yearnings.
It also breaks its own heart, pivoting in the middle from experimental high-wire act to tendentious issue drama.
Why does Majok do it?
The young woman, played by Sharlene Cruz, appears, asking to be let in.
Occasionally we see an exchange twice or out of order, or a sequence hopscotches through time.
A year might get covered this way in moments, a flip-book of snapshots.
B What are you gonna say at school?
About yer face
G Im not goin.
Yeah probly you should maybe dont.
B What are you gonna say at school?
About yer eye
B Yeah.
B What are you gonna say at school?
The pair start to practice for their immigration interview.
Where did we meet?
Do our parents approve?
When did the relationship first turn romantic?
Its all for a fake history, but both seem to blush over the answers.
And then G goes off to college.
There is, of course, another point on their what-kind-of-love triangle.
The unrequited American promise inserts itself into any romantic story Majok writes.
InIronboundandQueens,she dealt with immigrants alternately bearing up and collapsing under the States heavy boot.
How can desire, affection, and respect flourish in a place so determined to stop all flourishing?
So it should come as no surprise that Majok finds a way to rattle her central couple.
Its a formal shock, but there are other shocks to follow.
Some of these made the audience gasp when doesthathappen?
so it feels spoiler-y to talk too much about the dramas second half.
Everything we thought we knew was wrong.
Its a daring move, but it needs virtuosity to pull off.
Can I even trust my displeasure?
I think a clue to the waySanctuary Cityoperates is in the title.
Its irony is meant to catch you up short.
This,thisis what we call a sanctuary?
In such a foul-speaking world, every effort to help him turns into a mechanism of coercion and betrayal.
In such a Kafkaesque refuge, no hand, let alone a play, can reach him.
The glittering first half isnt the truth, but neither is the clay-footed second half.
Sanctuary Cityis at the Lucille Lortel Theatre through October 10.
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