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Nothing about any of the four we meet in the kitchen of a nebulous restaurant (the set is designed with cramped, efficient sterility by Wilson Chin) is exactly the way it seems at first. Peter (Jason Bowen), apparently the group's unofficial leader, is a late-twentysomething working to support his wife and daughter. Whalid (Brian Quijada) is a younger man constantly in search of the next big career (whether as an EMT, for the MTA, or any of a host of others) and the next in his string of hot girlfriends, but can't afford to not live with his parents. Both were born in America, however, and thus are perceived by their illegal-immigrant coworkers as having advantages they don't: Jorge (José Joaquín Pérez) scrimps endlessly and eats leftover food so he can send every penny back to the wife and children in Mexico he hasn't seen for four years, while Pepe (Reza Salazar) is new to the U.S., and still enticed by the riches he sees everywhere. Things don't develop much beyond this simple setup, but they don't have to—the characters are rich enough, as written and portrayed, to more than sustain the 95-minute evening. There are the expected professional rivalries, yes, as they jockey for shifts and the favor of the (unseen) front-of-house staff and restaurant manager. But there is also plenty of tension between Peter and Whalid and their coworkers, particularly the ultra-frugal Jorge, whom they perceive as technically making more because they see the dollar's worth as a function of Mexican and not American spending. Jorge and Pepe's clashing views about the proper use and saving of money are significant as well. And cultural tensions and expectations have a strong undercurrent in Whalid, who's two generations removed from his Mexican heritage, but is happy to claim that as his upbringing when it's useful to do so. As the story unrolls, we learn the ways in which our perceptions are at once accurate and misleading, with goals, the tactics for achieving them, and loyalties challenged and reconfigured as circumstances shift. Peter is at the center of the most devastating of these, and Bowen negotiates it with a powerfully thunderous subtlety, but everyone is given a chance or two to shine and surprise. Unfortunately, this is where some rare inelegance creeps in: Much of the men's background and underlying psychology is distributed by way of interior monologues that stop the show dead and rarely convey information we can't glean elsewhere; they're the only instances when Irwin seems to be talking at us rather than letting her characters reveal themselves naturally. Nonetheless, Chay Yew has directed the piece with a breezy urgency that shortchanges neither the camaraderie nor the cutthroat nature of events in the kitchen, and he's encouraged excellent, appropriate performances from his actors. Bowen stands out because of his role's prominence, but the actor never loses sight of Peter as part of this struggling community, and you believe, just as you should, that he's hanging on as tenuously as the rest. If Quijada sometimes overstresses Whalid's too-gregarious "player" qualities almost to the point of caricature, he's the most masterful onstage at showing the distinction between his character's public and private personas: The man he is with his friends visibly vanishes while he's taking plates to customers, and morphs into a loving, respectful son when he imagines how he'll treat his parents to a night on the town once he gets his big break. Pérez captures the searing intent of a man devoted to his job, and utters entire castigating speeches within single glances when Jorge wants to respond to disapproving coworkers, but isn't willing to risk losing his job. He also crafts the strongest relationships, transforming Jorge into a completely different person depending on whether he's dealing with Peter (whom he likes), Whalid (whom he doesn't), or Pepe (over whom he feels paternally responsible). Salazar does the least with his role, turning it into a somewhat garden-variety American Dream chaser, though that's in part because Pepe is a bit too one-note as written to support interpretations much more intricate than that. He's the exception, however, and not too distracting a one—in real life, sometimes people really are exactly what they appear to be. And it works within the broader framework of Irwin's dissection of a people and profession most of us rarely think too much about, but whose lives and problems are no less complex than those dining at the tables they clear. My Mañana Comes may not reach too high, but it's just as effective as it needs to be as a reminder that, even when there's little good reason to believe it will ever arrive, the yearning for a better tomorrow is one of the most universal functions of the human spirit, and one worth celebrating wherever—and everywhere—it may be found.
My Mañana Comes
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