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Intro
Henry Parsons, a South African man in his 60s, is walking outside a California shopping mall around Christmas. He turns and addresses the play’s audience, telling them that two years prior on Christmas Eve, an incident at that mall changed his life. He and a waitress at the mall’s sandwich shop, Adela Venegas, had just finished their usual “game” of humiliating one another. Standing outside the shop after Adela won the “game,” Henry wished a distracted “happy Christmas” to a passing elderly couple, Solly and Rachel. When Solly offered thanks but politely mentioned that he and his wife were Jewish, Henry felt deeply, resentfully rejected.
In a scenic flashback to an incident several months after that Christmas Eve, Henry reenters the sandwich shop and overhears Adela singing—in a beautiful voice—along with the radio. When Adela notices Henry, she stops singing, calls him a “borracho perdido” (lost drunk), and makes him his usual order, a turkey sandwich. Henry refuses the sandwich. He tells Adela she can call the police on him, but he suggests that they’d have questions about her immigration status. Adela, seething, takes Henry’s order and makes him a new sandwich.
When Adela brings Henry the new sandwich, she sees that he’s using a “missing persons” mailing card as a bookmark. Adela proclaims that the woman and girl on the card are no doubt a Mexican mother and daughter fleeing an abusive “gringo” husband/father to whom the courts awarded custody of the daughter, Isabella, because the judge, too, was a “gringo” and a man—just like Henry. When Henry informs Adela that he isn’t American, Adela tells him he’s still a “gringo.” And Adela, by contrast, is Mexican. Henry is struck by Adela’s national pride, a sentiment he can no longer feel about South Africa. He asks whether she’s homesick. When she admits that she is, he tells her that he got homesick all the time when he first moved to the U.S.—and sings her an Afrikaans song.
Henry cajoles Adela to perform the song she was singing when he walked into the sandwich shop. Eventually she does. He praises her voice and asks how long she’s lived in the U.S.; After telling Henry that she’s lived in the U.S. for two years, Adela asks how long Henry’s been there. Henry, fake-pompously, gives his life story: he's a 63-year-old who moved to the U.S. 15 years ago to teach medieval literature, and he got divorced 10 years ago when his wife told him she’d leave him if he didn’t stop drinking. He tried to stop, attending weekly Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, but he couldn’t do it. His estranged daughter Kate has told him she’d visit him if he stayed sober for a year—but he only ever makes it to 10 or 11 months, after which he self-sabotages because he’s afraid of Kate witnessing his pathetic life.
Adela reiterates that she identified Henry as a “borracho perdido” right away. When Henry resentfully asks if she thinks he’s a “hopeless” alcoholic, she tells Henry that her former former partner Roberto was hopeless: Roberto kept promising that he’d change, but he never did, and eventually he left her. Henry realizes aloud that Adela was hostile to him right away because he reminded her of Roberto. Adela tells Henry that maybe he could change—if he returned to South Africa and his wife. Henry claims it’s too late, but Adela tells him that he just needs a woman to “kick [his] arse.”
Solly and Rachel enter the sandwich shop. While Solly tries to order chicken soup from Adela, Henry stares at him. When Adela tells Solly that they have no chicken soup that day, he and Rachel leave. Afterward, Henry tells Adela about his “happy Christmas” mistake with Solly and Rachel that past Christmas Eve. Then he admits that that very morning, after taking a walk, he was cutting across a parking lot toward home when he saw antisemitic graffiti cut into someone’s parking space. He draws a Star of David and the words “Fuck You Jew” on the shop’s chalkboard menu to illustrate what he means, but he never speaks the words aloud.
Adela, alarmed by Henry’s reproduction of the graffiti, wipes it off the menu and tells him to calm down and leave. Henry, calming down, asks her to sit with him and talk. She does. He confesses to her that the “monster” of antisemitism lives inside him and that he summoned it, along with other prejudices, unconsciously during his South African childhood. When he looked at the antisemitic graffiti earlier that day, he tells Adela now, he felt “recognition” of an emotion he had felt toward Solly and Rachel, whom he perceived not as an elderly immigrant couple but as “a walking illustration of anti-Semitic propaganda.”
Solly and Rachel reenter the sandwich shop. Solly tells Adela that they couldn’t find the food they wanted anywhere else. He orders turkey sandwiches from Adela, then he gently walks Rachel to a table. Adela brings Solly and Rachel their sandwiches, but Rachel won’t eat. Solly encourages her to eat by singing her a Hebrew song. When he finishes, Henry asks what the song was about. Solly explains that he used to sing it with their son Aaron while Rachel prepared food, but now that Aaron is “gone,” he sings it to Rachel to help her eat. Henry and Adela beg Solly to sing the song again. After some hesitation, Solly and Rachel sing the song together.
In the quiet that follows, Henry and Solly stare at each other. Then Henry asks Solly to forgive him. Solly says he forgives Henry—but asks what for. Henry admits that he hated Solly for being Jewish but now, strangely, he loves him. In response, Solly tells Henry that God will forgive Henry, too.
The scene returns to Henry standing outside the shopping mall. He tells the audience that he never saw Solly, Rachel, or Adela again—two weeks after the encounter, he returned to find that the sandwich shop had closed. Then he wishes the audience “happy holidays.”
