Summary
Set in an illegal basement apartment in Queens, New York, this play spans several decades, following the lives of multiple generations of immigrant women who live there. Their makeshift community is thrown into disarray when a young woman arrives from Ukraine searching for the mother who abandoned her, forcing all the women to confront the impossible choices they made to survive.
Friday, October 24, 2025 at 8:00 PM Oct 24, 2025, 8:00 PM
Queens in Queens. A lot of nice themes in play: the practical & assimilatory challenges of migrating to America, the particular difficulty of feminine expression when basic needs aren’t being met, friendship & guarded solidarity under tough circumstances, the zero-sum nature of “getting what I deserve,” the failed promise of the American dream. Inside that territory, though, Martyna Majok’s Queens doesn’t offer a lot of surprises; moment to moment, a lot of the runtime is “woe is me” conversations that start to feel a little long-in-the-tooth after a while. It’s an okay play but I might have preferred a tighter version with a more concrete resolution. Good cast - Marin Ireland doing a lot of heavy lifting in the lead. Basement set cool too.