Though written in Britain for and about London, the fundamental circumstances of Let There Be Love are both familiar and current to American audiences.

Certainly its portrayals of aging and of strained family dynamics are likely to be immediately accessible to most of us. But, equally, the strains and stresses raised by immigration as illustrated in the play—whether between first and second generations, between ideas of assimilation and alienation, or between opposing immigrant communities themselves—play out in our cities and communities as well. After all, with nearly nonexistent exceptions, we all have some version of the arrival experience in our own past, whether ancient or recent.

Each character in the play stands, in the words of Steven Connor quoted above, at the gate, partly inside and partly outside of various—sometimes conflicting—forms of belonging. Each is negotiating in his or her own way the maneuver through that doorway, and what it means. The long-time immigrant struggles to balance a sense of belonging, to home or the host country. The new arrival is torn between iconic markers of assimilation and proud chacteristics of individual difference. The second generation looks past the obvious differences and may even start from a presumption of belonging; but that comes with an accompanying struggle over history and identity, the costs of rejecting the past to live in the present. Children long to stand free and clear as their own beings, but are always navigating the pull of family. Playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah noted recently that “history shapes who we are, individually and as peoples. Appreciating that can be a positive force;” as his play recognizes, it can also be a barred doorway in the passage to identity.

Language, dress, decor, deportment—anything and everything becomes a personal or political signifier of where we stand (by choice or not) along that spectrum. Does language or dialect—a means by which we locate difference or measure sameness, by accident or by intention—mark us as insider or outsider, new arrival or next generation? Am I my father’s child or my own person? Am I native or foreign, resident or visitor—of here, or from there? We all face and make similar calculations constantly: when we move, go to school, change jobs, find a partner. If we are lucky, we don’t have starker versions of such choices forced on us by natural disasters, war’s horrors, economic necessity, or other dire occasions. Even when it’s not something we flee, but rather the pull of opportunity that uproots us, we’re still going to find ourselves at that gate, looking in and staring out at the same time. What we find there, which side we end up on, how we are received, can make all the difference—not merely at the individual level, but in shaping entire communities and the course of nations.