At first blush, Clarence Coo’s On That Day in Amsterdam suggests the work of a very young playwright who clearly has a lot to say but isn’t quite sure how best to use his voice. We’re introduced to two young men who have arrived in the titular city via very different trajectories. Kevin is an American tourist—though he scoffs at that term, preferring “traveler”—who snuck off with his mother’s credit card after a disenchanting first semester of college.
Sammy, as he calls himself, never identifies where he’s from, though a number of clues are provided. There are the desperate phone calls from his brother, imploring him to connect with someone who can secure his safe entry into England. There are the memories of scurrying across Europe with his parents, now dead, who “dreamt of a country that could never possibly exist.”
Above all, there are the periodic references—made by other actors who narrate while assuming different roles—to news reports that Kevin will see years later, of refugees who meet terrible ends. These are accompanied by flashes of an older Kevin, who has fulfilled his youthful ambition of becoming a writer but not his specific goal of recapturing his roughly twenty-four hours with Sammy—which begin, incidentally, with a hookup in a noisy nightclub.
In fact, Coo, though relatively young, isn’t a novice, having already won several prestigious fellowships as well as awards for other plays. Amsterdam is quite obviously inspired by personal experience, and his portrait of Kevin seems both wistful and self-effacing. Though we learn that the character’s Filipina mother is undocumented, and he and Sammy bond at one point over the xenophobia both have endured, Kevin is plainly, abundantly more privileged. He’s also more cavalier at first, appearing prepared to dismiss Sammy as a one-night stand until he is thawed by the latter’s warmth.
The affection and good will that Sammy inspires soon morph into a sense of guilt that threatens to overtake not only Kevin but the production, directed with a rather heavy hand by Zi Alikhan. The narrators bellow different accounts of the couple’s day together, correcting and amending each other to reflect Kevin’s struggle to remember specifics about Sammy. “Was I that kind of person? Could I simply have forgotten?” one laments, adopting Kevin’s voice.
Sammy, in contrast, is utterly idealized, and repeatedly—with no ill intent, of course—underlines Kevin’s perception of himself as shallow. When the college boy is about to buy a notebook with a fancy cover, the refugee, amused, recommends another that costs one fifth as much. When Kevin notes that one of his favorite parts of traveling is “observing the locals” in cafés, Sammy knowingly asks, “And what do you notice about these locals?” Kevin sheepishly responds, “They drink coffee too.”
The riddles of memory and empathy are further explored by having the narrators—played by Jonathan Raviv, Brandon Mendez Homer and Elizabeth Ramos, all solid but overzealous (with Alikhan’s prodding, one suspects)—also do time as, respectively, Vincent Van Gogh, Rembrandt and Anne Frank, whose own experiences in Amsterdam are woven into the story as the protagonists visit relevant sites. The historical figures also reinforce the relationship between past and present, and the future; Sammy has learned out of harsh necessity to live squarely in the now, while Kevin is, naturally, more of a dreamer.
Nicholas Hussong’s alternately ethereal and brooding projection design, which includes numerous closeups of Sammy, adds to an intensity that can border on pretension—though Ahmad Maksoud, a temporary replacement for Waseem Alzer, manages to bring an endearing humility to that part, and Glenn Morizio makes Kevin consistently engaging and sympathetic.
For all of the play’s sometimes self-conscious social and historical nuances, in fact, it’s the common humanity evinced in these performances—and in other aspects of Coo’s lyrical, compassionate writing—that make Amsterdam most compelling.
