There is a very personal tragedy at the heart of John Leguizamo’s play, The Other Americans, which this underpowered production attempts to connect to the bigger themes of how racism and a feverish pursuit of the American Dream jointly capsize a family.

As well as writing the play (Public Theater, to Oct. 26), Leguizamo also plays its 59-year-old patriarch, Nelson Castro, a Colombian-American owner of a chain of laundromats. Nelson is initially full of avuncular swagger, but Leguizamo ensures—after Nelson shows off some impressive dance moves—that we soon see a darkness to him, a sour-grapes sneer to anything and anyone that displeases him.

Nelson might seem initially like the life and soul of a party (dancing first to “The Beat Goes On” by Whispers), but as the play progresses he becom

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