Elizabeth Frances and Joe Tapper in Manahatta at The Public Theater. Joan Marcus
Manahatta | 1hr 45mins. No intermission. | Public Theater | 425 Lafayette Street | 212-967-7555
Every history play has its moral. The Trojan Women: Victory in war brings shame to all. Richard III: Power may be gained (not held) by hypocrisy and murder. A Man for All Seasons and The Crucible: Convictions are worth dying for. So what’s the takeaway from Mary Kathryn Nagle’s Manahatta, which juxtaposes the 17th-century Dutch colonization of this island and the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis? Hard to choose one. White folks monetize, steal, and destroy everything they touch? Ownership is the root of all evil? Ancestors never die?
Maybe the clue is something Bobbie (Sheila Tousey) says to Luke (Enrico Nassi). She has leveraged a bank loan on an adjustable-rate mortgage in order to pay for her late husband’s crushing hospital bills. Debt-ridden Bobbie now faces foreclosure. Luke, like Bobbie, is Native American, working for his (white) father at the bank. He’s guilt-ridden over helping Bobbie into this financial quagmire. She’s philosophical about it. “[W]e need folks like you, to walk in both worlds,” Bobbie says. “You can talk their talk, walk their walk, but the moment you forget who you are, they have you. And then you’re walkin’ in one world, not two.”
It’s a powerful warning, one I wish Nagle had heeded. By running a Lenape family’s misfortunes through a dual-era structure, she prioritizes time-jumping echoes—between the “purchase” of Manahatta in 1626 and the housing market crash—over credible human drama. What it means, in practice, is an academic concept that looks good on paper, but yields shallow characters, wooden dialogue, and a perverse sense of historical fatalism.
Joan Marcus
