Courtesy of Albuquerque Little Theatre

The least known play is the one being performed right now, Mary Kathryn Nagle's Manahatta. Who is Mary Kathryn Nagle? She's an Oklahoma native, an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, a lawyer who advocates for Native American rights, and a writer. Her time-shifting play takes place on the island of Manhattan in the first decade of the 2000s and also in the 1600s when the Dutch West India company arrives and Peter Minuit "buys" the island from the Lenni-Lenape people. (They are now better known as the Delaware tribe, a name given to them by Europeans.) The island was part of the Lenape homeland and was called "Manahatta" by them. It didn't take long for the Dutch to take over and build a wall to keep the "savages" out. This became the current Wall Street, the financial district where much of the action of the play takes place.

Our protagonist, Jane Snake, shares some history with the playwright herself: comes from Oklahoma, is a tribal member (in the play, Lenape), and graduates summa cum laude from a prestigious university. Jane Snake's degree is in financial mathematics, not law, and she ends up on Wall Street working for Lehman Brothers. If you're old enough to remember the mortgage crisis of 2008-2009, you know how this is going to turn out. (You will hear terms like derivatives, mortgage-backed securities, and tranches, but it's not necessary to know exactly what they mean.)

Far removed from Wall Street, culturally and economically, is Jane's hometown of Anadarko Oklahoma. It's a small city with the largest single ethnic group being Native American. (It's helpful to know that "IHS" is the Indian Health Service, which generally provides free medical care to Native Americans, and that "BIA" is the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which ran boarding schools.) Jane's mother and sister live in Anadarko, so quite a bit of the action takes place there too, also partly having to do with questionable mortgage lending. Duplicity knows no geographic or temporal boundaries.

The play is remarkably well constructed, moving almost seamlessly between past and present and between New York and Oklahoma. A fraction of the dialogue is in the Lenape language, which the tribe is struggling to keep alive, but it's hard because there are so few native speakers left. We know where we are in time and place thanks to quick changes of costume and projections. It sounds like it would be confusing, but not at all.

Jay B. Muskett directs fluidly and has assembled a fine cast, several of whom are Native American. Celeste Lee is terrific as Jane, who almost never leaves the stage. She captures the difficulty of trying to fit into the Manhattan skyscraper world while not losing touch with her tribal roots and the burden of being considered a role model for Native Americans.

Veronica Barrett as Jane's mother and Jordan Lidy as Jane's sister also do excellent work. Stanley Shunkamolah (it's an Osage name) makes you feel the fractured life he leads as a Native American taken from his grandparents and raised by an Anglo family. (This used to happen fairly often until the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978.) Doug Rebok, Bailey Hunt, and Jeremy A. Levin are the "Anglo" actors, saddled with portraying unsympathetic characters in both the present and the past, and all three do a wonderful job.

The unit set design by Jason Roman and the lighting design by Emma Ziegler allow quick transitions between centuries and locations. I don't know for sure who did the projections, but they are beautiful and essential to defining the locations where the action occurs. The contemporary and Dutch costumes are by Emma Harrison and the indigenous costumes are by Luna Frank and Helena Tsosie. Props and sound design are by Lando Ruiz. All are spot on. Stage manager Catie Peters must be very busy because there are many brief scenes and many costume changes.

I hope that New Mexicans embrace this play. Although it's not specifically about the Native Americans in our state, it's enlightening about what many Native Americans went through in the past and are still going through now. On top of that, it's well acted and well staged. Heartbreaking, too.

Manahatta runs through October 19, 2025, at Albuquerque Little Theatre, 224 San Pasquale SW, Albuquerque NM. For tickets and information, please visit albuquerquelittletheatre.org.