In 'The Humans,' a Thanksgiving dinner is slathered in affection with a side of bitters

While reading "The Humans," Stephen Karam's incisive and well-observed one-act, director Lily Tung Crystal tripped over a line that made her bristle — about "the little old Chinese lady" who lives upstairs.

"The line is not bad but it feels a little charged," Tung Crystal said. "Where we are today, I don't know if you can say those types of lines unless you're Asian yourself."

The director remedied her discomfort by casting two Asian American actors as the youngest daughters in this play about an Irish American family.

"I felt that that choice made sense because the Twin Cities audience would understand white parents with Asian daughters," Tung Crystal said. "There are many families with that demographic here."

Written in 2014, "Humans" won a best play Tony Award two years later. A national tour of the play, headlined by Richard Thomas, launched in 2017. The script was made into a 2021 Showtime film by Karam headlined by Amy Schumer.

Tung Crystal's production kicks off Park Square Theatre's new season when it begins previews next Wednesday.

The play pulls the curtains back on some of the things that beset the American family. The story swirls around three generations of the Blakes, a tightknit Pennsylvania clan with lots of deep-seated issues. Daughter Brigid and her boyfriend, Richard, have recently moved into a new place in Manhattan's Chinatown. Even though they have little furniture, they invite her family over for Thanksgiving, the launch of the tension-filled holiday season.

As parents Erik and Deirdre, elder sister Aimee and grandmother Fiona "Momo" Blake gather for the meal, conversation turns to touchy subjects such as relationships, careers and body weight, opening old wounds and creating new ones.

"With family and relationships in general, misunderstandings often come through miscommunication — through unspoken elements and subtext," said Laura Anderson, who plays Aimee. "This family loves each other despite their dysfunction and lack of understanding."

The characters are all going through something. Aimee, who has ulcerative colitis, has recently broken up with her girlfriend. Brigid, a struggling artist, has not been able to nab the funding that she believes might give her career a charge. Grandmother Momo has memory loss. Erik and Deirdre's relationship may not be what they wish it to be. And Deirdre, who's deeply religious, resents that her daughters have moved away from their faith and from her.

"The setting for the show is the 2010s," Tung Crystal said. "It talks about 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy, for instance. But so many of the issues that the family faces around economic hardship, broken relationships and career disappointment are challenges that we're grappling with today. The thing I like about the play is that it deals with these issues in such a nuanced way."

Twin Cities actors John Middleton and Charity Jones, a real-life couple, play the married couple here. Veteran performer Angela Timberman has been cast as Momo and Darrick Mosely is Richard.

Dexieng "Dae" Yang, who plays Brigid, said that the character is very unlike her.

"Brigid is quite bold, and she says things where I go, ''Ooh, my mom would smack me for that,'" Yang said. "We're trying to make sure that she's understood and likable but not shying away from the fact that she says things that are just inappropriate."

Anderson loves that she has been picked to play Aimee, and also against type.

"Aimee is just an American, and she gets to say what she wants," Anderson said.

Significantly, the director's idea behind casting adoptees as the daughters puts her right at home.

"I'm a Korean adoptee," Anderson said. "Growing up, I never saw a mixed family represented in film, TV or onstage. Representation matters."

That is an important point for this production, Tung Crystal said.

The play, she continued, is about all of us as we grapple with issues in our lives and what it means to be in a relationship with each other, both in the small sense of people related by blood, and in the larger sense of relations under a national umbrella.

"By turning the traditional American family on its head and presenting a mixed-race family, we're widening the margins of what it means to be American."

"The Humans"
By: Stephen Karam. Directed by Lily Tung Crystal.
Where: Park Square Theatre, 20 W. 7th Pl., St. Paul.
When: Previews Sept. 14-15, opens Sept. 16. Runs through Oct. 9.
Tickets: $27-$37 for previews, $40-$55 for regular run. Pay-as-you're-able Sept. 25. 651-291-7005 or parksquaretheatre.org.