John Leguizamo and Luna Lauren Velez Photo by Joan Marcus

Leguizamo stars as Nelson, the middle-aged Colombian-American owner of a laundromat in Queens, New York. The business itself is a family affair, inherited from his father and operated by Nelson with the assistance of his wife Patti (Luna Lauren Velez, giving a standout performance as a woman of conflicting loyalties) and their daughter Toni (Rebecca Jimenez). The business has been reasonably successful, but never successful enough for Nelson, who is consumed by an unshakable belief that he can hustle his way in and out of any situation and, in doing so, grab hold of the elusive brass ring of the American Dream.

To that end, he has persuaded Patti to leave their home and friends in the vibrant, culturally diverse neighborhood of Jackson Heights and move into the more upscale Forest Hills, also in Queens but with a suburban feel, characterized by nicely appointed single-family homes, big backyards, and a ticky-tacky sameness, essentially a white enclave with precious little racial or ethnic diversity. As such, it is a paradigm of at least one version of that American Dream, hinted at in Arnulfo Maldonado's busy set design that speaks volumes about the acquisition of material things that drives but fails to satisfy Nelson's obsession.

That Nelson has overplayed his hand and is in financial distress is clear from the start, as he schemes to hit up his rather more successful sister Norma (Rosa Evangelina Arredondo) for yet another loan to keep his ambitions afloat. But Nelson is a bullshit artist without the art of the deal to fall back on, a man who blames everyone else for his problems, and a heavy drinker to boot; he is able to charm no one with his self-deluded belief in himself.

At least Patti and Norma and Toni can see through him and either ignore or work around his strutting and posing, little realizing how low he is willing to go to feed his bottomless narcissism. To that end, Leguizamo brings in another character, Nelson and Patti's fragile 20-year-old son Nick (Trey Santiago-Hudson, whose own father Ruben Santiago-Hudson directs). Nick's life has been a shambles ever since he was the victim of a violent, racially motivated attack that has left long-term mental scars beyond the physical ones. And while his father is somewhat sympathetic, he refuses to discuss the incident or to support Nick's still ongoing recovery.

For two hours, plus an intermission, we are invited to join this family's own relentless journey into night, suffused with predictable plot turns and unfortunately clichéd dialog, along with an ending that is foreseeable long before it unfolds. Arthur Miller and Eugene O'Neill wrote their own masterful dysfunctional family plays in the 1940s with what were then original and significant voices. The Other Americans is set in the late 1990s but, other than the insertion of Latino characters and a lingering stench of racism, it offers precious little that is new or revelatory.