To the Bone (Cherry Lane Theatre)

There must be something in the air: To the Bone is the second play this month examining the plight of undocumented workers who prop up the US economy with nothing but scars to show for it. The first was My Mañana Comes, produced by The Playwrights Realm, about restaurant workers in Manhattan. It’s indicative of the subject’s richness that these plays are thoroughly unalike, but for one thing: Both are tense, gripping dramas that are all but guaranteed to make your blood boil. In To the Bone, the playwright Lisa Ramirez looks at houseful of Latina women living in Sullivan County, New York. Three of them work long hours in a chicken processing plant, a job that leaves them exhausted and prey to repetitive stress injuries. Olga, the house’s owner, is Salvadoran, but she has a green card, giving her an advantage over the others; she is also one tough cookie, a truth-teller with an acid tongue. Olga doesn’t care who she offends, be it her tenants or the plant management that treats them like dirt. Sharing their home is Reina, a Honduran, who has spent so many years in the US trying to get ahead that her children back home no longer speak to her, and Juana, a Guatemalan whose sleepwalking episodes hint at the tragedy that haunts her. Unlike Olga, Reina and Juana are deeply religious, go-along-to-get-along types. They dare not be noticed, for fear of being sent home. Olga’s daughter, Lupe, is a branch off the same tree, a feisty, hip-hop-loving college student — she writes her own raps — who plans to be a lawyer and fight injustice. (Her ambition is to attend NYU, a notion that keeps Olga up nights.)