I flew in under the wire to catch 5th Wall Theatre’s final performance of Martyna Majok’s Sanctuary City at Richmond Triangle Players‘ impressive stage in Scott’s Addition. This play is a curious hybrid, a bifurcated cryptid if you will, as its first and second acts are paced in startling opposition to each other.
The play begins in time-lapse montage as two young DREAMers (in the immigration legislation sense of the word) grow up and together in post-9/11 Newark, NJ. The boundaries of their best-friendship are tested when one is left without a path toward citizenship while the other moves forward to college and a fully realized American life. The two devise a plan to keep them together in the States, but it comes at a high price. How far do you bend in the service of love before flexibility turns toxic?
The first act is a patchwork of time-hopping conversation fragments that start, stutter, cascade, and conclude seemingly at whim. This isn’t entirely novel, of course. The device is particularly useful when presenting a mystery of facts or motivations. Here, it challenges understanding more than convention.
There are real issues here with deep significance worth exploring – physical abuse, food insecurity, forced anonymity under the threat of deportation, and the toll of patience in the face of racist immigration policies. By formatting the action as a treatise on things evolving yet stagnating via flashes of grey-boundaried memory, the artistic device cheats the audience of the full emotive spectrum showcased in the wildly different and significantly better second act.
While a good half of these beats are fresh and engaging, so many vignettes are too short or repetitive to convey any meaning at all, giving it an abstract tempo for little emotive payoff. It’s often difficult to tell why a particular fragment is wedged between two others, neither complementing nor catalyzing the overall presentation. The escalating and retreating of their characters’ experiences is a dance also punctuated by discordant sound cues and spotlight hops that were often more invasive than the dialogue and concepts they were framing.
Erich Appleby and Anne Michelle Forbes – “B” and “G” in the script, respectively – service the material ably. If there is any criticism to be given, it is in the shadow of the criticisms of the play that I laid out above. The longer scenes, including a sweet trip to their high school prom, felt warm, heartfelt. The vignettes where B is covering for G’s bruises at the hands of her abuser with excuses delivered to her school, felt like a ton of bricks hovering over an unaffected scale. I don’t hold this against the actors. I have no notes for them.
There’s a time jump and G is in school in Boston, growing, learning, and thriving. B is stuck in Newark, working under-the-table gigs, looking over his shoulder at all times and waiting for the other shoe to drop. B has found love but G is still pining for a romance that will never be directed at her. G is the key to B’s citizenship via promised convenience marriage and his oldest and dearest friend. Enter Henry.
Keaton Hillman, a fixture in Richmond’s theatre community, elevates the play from the second he walks on stage. His character is a reluctant mediator between the man he loves and the woman his man needs. Keaton’s “Henry” is fully-realized. I cannot stress enough what a towering talent we have in him in Richmond. Henry is a New Yorker fiercely protecting his space, harboring resentment towards G for her broken promises of salvation for B, while understanding that the endpoint in fulfilling those dreams sidelines his efforts to love B with dignity. He is believable, natural, a sympathetic character trying to do the best for himself and his boyfriend.
Keaton, and the straightforward narrative style, put Appleby and Forbes in a different arena to showcase their talents. There are full conversations to weave motivations and emotions through. What transpires fulfills the promise of the earlier scenes to the hilt. The tension is palpable. The positions of each character are valid and your heart breaks for each of them in turn. I have seen all three of these actors in previous performances and my opinions of them remain high. I very much look forward to seeing them again.
Director Juliana Cayceydo made every good choice one could make to create a cohesive and impactful story. Her production team, particularly Dasia Gregg’s set design, prove up to the task as well. 5th Wall Theatre has a deep well of talent to draw from. In this instance, I felt the material wasn’t up to the talents of the company but I am very excited to see what they put on next.
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