‘Public Charge’ Dramatizes a Diplomat’s Recollection of the Private Machinations of Hillary Clinton’s State Department

By any measure, Julissa Reynoso is impressive and inspiring. Born in the Dominican Republic, she grew up in the Bronx and earned degrees from Harvard, Cambridge and Columbia’s School of Law. In addition to her extensive work as an attorney, Ms. Reynoso served as U.S. ambassador to Spain and Andorra during the Biden administration; prior to that, under President Obama, she was deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs and then ambassador to Uruguay.“Public Charge,” a new play that Ms. Reynoso wrote with Michael J. Chepiga, who has also practiced law — the two met, his biography tells us, at a large New York firm—focuses on her time in the latter positions, between 2009 and 2014. In retrospect, that may seem like a calmer period for diplomacy, but the play, now in its world premiere at the Public Theater, charts the many obstacles that stood in her path.We first meet Julissa, played with verve and charm by Zabryna Guevara, as a six-year-old child in Santo Domingo, as her nervous uncle appeals to a consular officer for the U.S. State Department. “Her mother is in the United States. She works very hard, in a factory,” the uncle explains, as the terrified girl, who doesn’t yet speak English, looks on. “Lots of welfare mothers in the Bronx,” the officer snarls.The next scene unfolds nearly three decades later in Washington, as Julissa applies for a considerably higher position at the department, under Secretary Hillary Clinton. This time her challenger is Ricardo Zuniga, director of Cuban affairs, who in real life wound up serving as a principal deputy assistant secretary under President Biden. Here Ricardo is, by his own typically wry definition, “a holdover from the Bush era,” and he quickly emerges as a foil to the liberal, idealistic Julissa.“I’m not anti-Cuban. Just a rational foreign service officer who has served under Democratic and Republican presidents,” Riccardo declares. “And there’s one thing your Harvard radicals didn’t tell you. Every time we start normalization talks, the Cubans sabotage them. It’s what they do.”What follows in this one-act piece does not exactly contradict Ricardo, whose good intentions and sense of humor become increasingly evident in Dan Domingues’s clever, engaging portrait. “Public Charge” offers a refreshingly balanced, clear-minded view of geopolitics, plainly informed by Ms. Reynoso’s hands-on experience, in which not only corruption but cultural differences can make it difficult for people and governments to arrive at neat solutions.That sense of nuance doesn’t always apply, unfortunately, to the dialogue, and the other profession shared by the playwrights may be a factor here: Too often, conversations suggest oral arguments rather than natural exchanges, with Julissa and Ricardo and other characters pontificating or making what sound like canned observations.Cheryl Mills, who was Secretary Clinton’s chief of staff during President Obama’s first term, is represented as especially mighty and righteous, and is thus called on to speechify with particular frequency. “Most people don’t think we can change anything. And many don’t even want to,” she warns Julissa in their first meeting, after announcing, “The United States hasn’t always had the most stellar reputation in Latin America” — and before leaving to pick up her children from break dancing class.Fortunately, Marinda Anderson’s warm, witty performance humanizes Cheryl, and director Doug Hughes, an accomplished Broadway veteran, culls similarly sharp and accessible work from the other actors. Al Rodrigo is a standout in an assortment of roles, from José “Pepe” Mujica, the Uruguayan revolutionary-turned-president, to Jorge Bolaños, a Cuban politician and diplomat depicted here as smug and unctuous; Riccardo calls him “a petty Cuban bureaucrat.”Jorge is among several officials Julissa seeks out in trying to liberate Alan Gross, a USAID sub-contractor who was imprisoned in Cuba for years under Raúl Castro. Though Mr. Gross isn’t represented on stage, a good deal of “Public Charge” focuses on his plight, and his despairing wife, Judy, appears at several points, movingly played by Deirdre Madigan.Arnulfo Maldonado’s stylish, minimalist scenic design breezily takes us from Washington to various foreign countries, with a few stops in Julissa’s childhood home. Late in the play, Julissa returns to the Bronx to join her father and his friend, a bodega owner, as they watch President Obama celebrate a victory she helped secure, and express new hope for his country’s relationship with Cuba.In a sort of epilogue, Jalessa and Ricardo are hopeful too. She envisions “sixteen years of good government. Eight from a Black man and eight from the first woman president,” obviously referencing Secretary Clinton. “Listen, I’m all in,” Ricardo says. “I’ve just been spending too much time in Latin America dealing with crazy narcissist leaders. People actually vote for those fools.”They go on like this for a bit; the irony of their predictions is, like much of the writing in “Public Charge,” a little overstated. Still, the play gives a more fleshed-out, less patronizing picture of how important matters get settled — and don’t —than audiences normally get to see.

‘Public Charge’ Dramatizes a Diplomat’s Recollection of the Private Machinations of Hillary Clinton’s State Department

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