Eva Noblezada and Juyeon Song will lead the New York premiere of The Heart Sellers, Lloyd Suh’s play about two immigrant women who meet by chance on Thanksgiving in 1973, at MCC Theater this winter.
Previews begin on January 8, 2027, at the Susan and Ronald Frankel Theater, inside the Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space at 511 West 52nd Street. Opening night is January 21, and the limited run ends on February 14. May Adrales directs.
The play has taken the long way to New York. Milwaukee Repertory Theater commissioned it through its John (Jack) D. Lewis New Play Development Program, and it had its first public performance there on February 2, 2023. Adrales has since staged it at the Huntington Theatre Company and the Guthrie Theater, and Song created the role of Jane in both. Suh was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for The Far Country; his other plays include The Chinese Lady and Charles Francis Chan Jr.’s Exotic Oriental Murder Mystery.
The story is deliberately small. Jane and Luna are strangers, both new to the country, who decide to spend this unfamiliar holiday together. The evening fills up with laughter and talk of what each of them wants from life, while a frozen turkey stubbornly refuses to thaw.
Noblezada won a Grammy and earned a Tony nomination for Hadestown, her second nomination in as many Broadway roles after Miss Saigon in 2017. She recently completed a return engagement as Daisy in The Great Gatsby on Broadway, and in London she has appeared in the West End revivals of Miss Saigon and Les Misérables and reprised Sally Bowles in Cabaret and Eurydice in Hadestown. The Heart Sellers marks Song’s Off-Broadway debut; her screen work includes the second season of BEEF and Copenhagen Expats.
The design team is Wilson Chin (sets), Jennifer Moeller (costumes), Jiyoun Chang (lighting) and Fabian Obispo (sound), with props supervision by Natalie Carney. Alyssa K. Howard is production stage manager and Tyler Crow assistant stage manager, Nicole Johnson / Harriet Tubman Effect is the DEI consultant, and casting is by The Telsey Office.
Performances run Tuesday to Friday at 7pm, Saturday at 2pm and 7pm, and Sunday at 1pm and 6pm. Around the opening there are a few changes: no 2pm shows on Saturday, January 9 or Saturday, January 16, no 1pm show on Sunday, January 10, and no public performance on opening night, Thursday, January 21. An extra 2pm matinee is added on Thursday, January 28, and on Sunday, January 31 and Sunday, February 14 the only performance is at 2pm. The February 5 performance is open captioned.
Audience conversations follow the January 14 and February 2 performances, Suh and Adrales hold a talkback after the January 15 show, and the cast takes questions after the January 27, January 31 and February 4 performances. A pre-show event is planned for January 20 and a community forum for January 28.
MCC patrons can book first, from November 10 at noon. Subscriber priority booking follows on November 16 at noon, and tickets go on general sale on November 23 at noon. Details are at mcctheater.org.
