On the way out of The Other Americans , the new drama written by and starring John Leguizamo, I overheard a man about my age talking to his friend as they shuffled up the aisle. “If that isn’t my family,” he said, trailing off. He looked a little shell-shocked. I don’t know what he thought of the play as a play, but he had seen something of his own experience on stage and it had moved him.

Sadly, that’s probably the only way anyone seeing Leguizamo’s attempt at a hefty American family tragedy à la Arthur Miller or August Wilson is going to be moved. The show certainly contains cultural observations that sound notes of truth on both the communal and domestic scale, and whatever identity you’re bringing to the room as a viewer, it’s possible for those echoes to stir you. The play itself

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