MY TRAIN LEAVES AT THREE

An aspiring Afro-Latina actress in New York City tries to reboot her life after her sister’s sudden death.

“When I was a kid, I thought I’d be rich and famous by now. I thought that I’d have a record deal or a poodle or a pool somewhere out in California. Enough money in my bank account to airlift my mother out of our tiny apartment in Washington Heights, and get my frizzy hair blown out twice a week, and buy my sister, Nena, the Mercedes-Benz she always wanted. But I’m still broke, and barely even singing in the shower, and my hair is a mess, and my sister is dead, so nothing I imagined has come true.” Xiomara Sanchez is very close to the edge, emotionally, financially, and otherwise. She’s working two jobs, one at a quick-print shop with a shady owner, the other at Ellen’s Stardust Diner, the Times Square restaurant where Broadway hopefuls wait tables and perform musical numbers, vividly recreated here. She’s sleeping with unpleasant men, fighting with her friends and her mother, powerless against the weight of her grief—until the opportunity to audition for the rare lead made for a Black woman comes up, and she makes a connection with the showrunner Manny Santos. The first-person narration has the fluid, associative character of internal monologue, immersing us in Xiomara’s experience of racism, sexism, and sexuality, of her body as it appears to herself and others. When a very nice guy is hired at the print shop, and when she progresses in the audition process, the main thing holding her back is her damaged self-esteem: Toxic situations come easier to her than healthy ones. After some brutal setbacks and judgment errors, the gritty realism of Guerrero’s debut gradually morphs into contemporary fairy tale, rewarding our princess with second chances she didn’t see coming, but finds she has the resources to grasp after all.

An immersive and culturally acute coming-of-age story convincingly set on the darker side of the New York theater industry.