Theatre in Review: Manahatta (Public Theater)

	Jeffrey King, Elizabeth Frances, Joe Tapper. Photo: Joan Marcus.

Manahatta is a thing of mirrors, a fact immediately obvious in Marcelo Martínez García's set, which features an upstage reflecting wall that, when backlit, reveals new depths. This is, I think, a nod to the structure of Mary Kathryn Nagle's play, in which eerily similar narratives are woven into a double helix of dispossession and betrayal. It's a tale of two centuries, distinguished by steel-trap construction; the playwright argues, with prosecutorial force, that the toxic combination of colonialism and capitalism, present at this country's birth, continues to poison the body politic, especially for Native Americans.

Manahatta begins in 2002 when Jane Snake, a young member of the Lenape Tribe with a stellar academic record, is hired by a New York City investment bank. For all her outsider status -- Native Americans being all but unheard of on Wall Street -- the job represents a kind of homecoming because her ancestors dwelt on the "island of many hills" as it was known before the Dutch settlers arrived. How badly does Jane -- who, intriguingly, is both diffident and iron-willed -- want the position? She arrives for her interview on the same day that her father, in Oklahoma, is undergoing open heart surgery. "My parents didn't graduate from high school," she says. "I went to Stanford because I knocked down every obstacle placed in my way." Even Joe, her, skeptical, hard-charging new boss, finds her impossible to dismiss.

As it happens, Jane's father doesn't survive the operation, leaving his widow, Bobbie, with a debt of $60,000 that the Indian Health Service declines to pay off. Michael, a friendly banker, helps Bobbie get a loan, unwittingly putting her on the road to financial ruin. (Lacking a credit score, she has only her house as collateral but no deed of possession.) But, as Manahatta shows, it has all happened before: The action shifts to 1626 when members of the Lenape tribe are unknowingly conned out of their homeland in the infamous deal with the Dutch colonist Peter Minuit. In both cases, the root issue is ownership, a concept that doesn't exist in the Lenape language. Thus, what appears to be a simple exchange of gifts is the New World's first dubious real estate deal; as Bobbie will learn, it isn't the last.

Back in New York, Jane, fighting for her professional life -- she has begun noticing certain alarming details in the fine print of the securities she sells -- brazenly misrepresents herself to one of Joe's clients, landing a transaction that yields a mind-boggling profit. (She manages to get herself fired and rehired to a better position in less than an hour, not bad for the new kid in town.) Unaware that Bobbie is drowning in debt -- the distance between mother and daughter is psychological as well as geographical -- Jane becomes her firm's latest darling, landing enormous bonuses and restyling herself as one of the boys. But the 2008 financial crash looms, ready to unleash seismic changes that reach from New York to the heartland.

A heavily plot-driven piece, Manahatta is saved from melodrama by Nagle's perceptively drawn characters, none of whom are saints or villains. Jane is driven by the need to prove that a Native American woman can make it in a business world dominated by white men, but her success leaves her rootless and distanced from her loved ones. Michael, who is white, is a devout church elder eager to help Bobbie, but his assistance proves disastrous; he is also the adoptive father (and employer) of Luke, a Lenape who harbors feelings for Jane. Michael has a counterpart in Jonas Michaelius, a 17th-century missionary who manages to alienate the Lenape and his Dutch sponsors with his proselytizing. Debra, Jane's resentful sister, is both a lesbian (actively seeking a girlfriend) and a churchgoing Christian; she also runs a program designed to revive and disseminate the Lenape language, which has fallen into disuse. As Manahatta proves time and again, language is more than an all-important tool of communication; it is the key to claiming one's identity.

To be sure, the script is loaded with nuances that don't allow for easy judgments. Dick, the ruthless head of Jane's firm comes to admire her, noting, "You know what makes this country so great? People like you can start with nothing, work hard, and look where you end up. I mean, you don't see any Native Americans running investment banks in London, now do you?" (Well, it's a point.) Then again, Bobbie tells the distressed Luke, who is involved in her foreclosure, "We need folks like you. To walk in both worlds," adding by way of warning, "Just remember you can talk their talk, walk their walk, but the moment you forget who you are, they have you." It's advice that her daughter could use.

Laurie Woolery's staging moves rapidly between both time frames, contrasting Jane and Bobbie's struggles in a collapsing economy with the violent social breakdown that occurs between the Dutch and the Lenape following the introduction of guilders as the only acceptable currency. Among the members of the company, all of whom are double-cast, Elizbeth Frances rightly dominates as both Jane and, in the 17th-century scenes, Le-le-wa'-you, who helps open the door to fur trading with the Dutch. (In one key misunderstanding, Minuit and his cohort don't grasp that, among the Lenape, women are often the decision-makers). But everyone makes a strong impression, including Rainbow Dickerson as the angry, yet sympathetic, Debra and Enrico Nassi as Luke, who finds his loyalties divided between Michael and Bobbie. (Nassi also plays Se-ket-tu-may-qua, who befriends the colonists only to end up fighting for his life.) David Kelly is strong as two ineffectual men of piety as are Joe Tapper and Jeffrey King as capitalists of the past and present. In a cast filled with striking new faces, the veteran Sheila Tousey captivates as Bobbie, whose calm acceptance of adversity provides the play with its deepest note of grace.

García's set facilitates the fluid shifting back and forth between time frames, aided by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew's lighting. (She also ushers in the economic crisis with potent green and red chases, colors that subliminally suggest profit and loss.) Paul James Prendergast combines effective music with a sound design that includes birdsong, bird wings, and gunfire. Lux Haac's costumes are suitable for each era although, late in the action, the divide breaks down, with actors appearing in the 17th-century scenes dressed for today and vice versa. This seems to be intentional -- it might be because the furiously climaxing action doesn't allow for fast changes -- but it can be a little confusing.

There are also occasional moments when the characters' decisions feel tailored to the needs of the plot. For example, Bobbie's ongoing refusal to accept Jane's financial help represents a flinty independence that seems unnecessarily self-destructive. Nevertheless, this is an elegant, provocative debut. As Jane says, "The Dutch built a wall on Wall Street to keep us out. To make us leave our home. But I came back. I came home. And I climbed all the way to the top." Her success is all hers, as is the disaster it brings; as Nagle makes blazingly clear, much work needs to be done to break the mirror image of the past that continues to plague us today. -- David Barbour