Written by Juan Villegas; Directed by Ian Gordon
Theater for a New City | 155 First Avenue (between 9th and 10th Street)
New York, NY 10003
November 5, 2026 – November 29, 2026
The everyday occurrence of the subway going out of service leads us to a vacant tenement building, sparking a journey into the past that is equal parts time machine and reflection on the flawed nature of our own recollections and the weight we carry, earned or otherwise, throughout our lives. This is the exploration laid out for us by Juan Villegas’ new play Boy Santos, currently running at the Theater For The New City.
Stumbling upon a door reminding him of the one that graced his childhood apartment in El Barrio, Charlie Santos, played by Villegas himself, along with an ensemble cast, guides us through his memories of New York’s 1960s Upper East Side. From stickball to tops to the sugarcane man hawking pieces of cane for a nickel, the ensemble deftly transports us to a time that older audiences will remember, fondly or otherwise, while their younger counterparts may have never considered these events to have actually occurred outside of Hollywood movies. I was immediately swept back in time to my own grandparents’ railroad apartment in Yorkville of the late 70s, with the clothesline outside the kitchen window, the black and white tv on a rolling cart, and the sounds of the City roiling up the back alley courtyard. But with this rose-tinted nostalgia also comes the remembrance of struggle – people of the neighborhood fighting to survive, mothers taking their children along to put down the change from their groceries on the weekly numbers, absentee fathers crippled by post-war depression and addiction, hopheads selling stolen wares on overturned milk crates in the street – the same stolen wares that may have once graced your own meager apartment before it was unceremoniously violated. Now color all of this through the lens of a ten-year-old child and blur those memories with the inexorable march of decades. How much of what we remember was real and how much is just what we can puzzle together from those days long gone?
Supported by a talented ensemble cast, Villegas leads us through the tenements of Charlie’s memories on a quest to find answers regarding mysteries of his childhood. His earnest vulnerability, paired with his wandering unseen through these vignettes of the past, very effectively connects us to the plight of the largely Puerto Rican inhabitants of Spanish Harlem of the mid 60s and Villegas’ dialogue – a blend of English, Spanish, and New Yoriquan “Spanglish” – is both familiar and honest. While the entire cast is strong and builds the reality of Charlie’s memories well, his parents are stand outs. Charlie’s mother, beautifully played by Janelle Fuentes, is the picture of the power matriarch, a struggling single mother, with two children already and a third on the way, who still ensures that her family has all the creature comforts they need. From a two-foot-tall Christmas tree bought with her last four dollars to a second hand black and white television, what they have may be meager, but it is treasured nonetheless and paints for us a picture of hope in the face of adversity; hope that is ultimately rewarded as her grace leads to success and honor. Jeancarlos Aponte makes a powerful turn as Charlie’s absentee father Hector, exploring the depths of post-war trauma and guiding us into the darker areas of Charlie’s past. In a particularly harrowing yet effective moment in Act Two, our hearts break as Aponte comes face to face with the mortality of addiction and pain caused by war.
Ian Gordon’s direction deftly handles the large cast, allowing us to sink into the past and relive the days of Charlie’s childhood alongside him. The slice-of-life realism crafted for us works well, from the hide-and-seek shenanigans of schoolkids, to the crooning of a local streetcorner teen serenading the girls across the way, to recreations of actual moments in New York history. And in keeping with the theme of day-to-day optimism juxtaposed by moments of intense struggle and hardship, Gordon does not shy away from the difficult. Charlie’s father being crushed by the weight of his own past, desperation forcing people to prey on their neighbors, and a one-two-punch of a terrifying experience at the tenement door potentially leading to a devastating funeral tableau in the second act all serve to bring the inherent danger of the time sharply into focus at just the right points in the narrative.
The set by Lytza Colon is simple and effective, a series of brick walls, flimsy tenement doors, and window frames looking out onto each other immediately evoke the iconic New York tenement of the later half of the 20 th century. With simple furnishings in key spots, supported by the lighting from Mads West, the set slides easily from 1962 to the present and from inside various apartments, to streetside gatherings, to back alleys –mirroring the way our memories of these places and times of our own past blur and mesh together. I never found myself struggling with when and where we were, as everything exists in the amorphous, almost dreamlike recollections of Charlie.
Running a tight ninety minutes, Boy Santos is as much a time-machine as it is a tale of one man’s recollections into his own hazy past. It lets those of us who are old enough to remember those days gone by relive them in crisp detail and serves as a history lesson to those too young to have experienced those days for themselves. How much of those memories are real versus how much are shaded in the sepia tones of age? Regardless of their verity, those memories are what shape us into who we are today and remembering them allows us to never forget who we truly are at heart.
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Review by Ian McDonald.
Published by Theatre Beyond Broadway on November 8, 2026. All rights reserved.