Tag Archives: Roxanna Hope Radja

WISH YOU WERE HERE

Five friends get ready for a wedding in world premiere of Sanaz Toossi’s Wish You Were Here at Playwrights Horizons (photo by Joan Marcus)

WISH YOU WERE HERE
Playwrights Horizons, Mainstage Theater
416 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 5, $49-$89
www.playwrightshorizons.org

First-generation Iranian-American playwright Sanaz Toossi follows up her wonderful professional debut, English, which ran earlier this year at the Atlantic, with the even better Wish You Were Here, which opened tonight at Playwrights Horizons.

Written in 2018 as her NYU thesis in response to Donald Trump’s Muslim travel ban and anti-immigration policies, English is set in a TOEFL classroom in Karaj, Iran, in 2008, where four Iranian adults are learning to speak English as they and their teacher question the meaning of home and how language and culture impact their identity.

Written in 2019 as a response to Trump’s threat to retaliate against Iran after the Western Asian republic shot down an unmanned US drone, Wish You Were Here follows the trials and tribulations of five close female friends in Karaj from 1978 to 1991 who experience what Toossi calls “detached homesickness” as the nation goes through major changes, from the Islamic Revolution to the Iran-Iraq War.

The story unfolds in ten scenes that all take place in the same well-accoutred living room. Salme (Roxanna Hope Radja) is in a giant wedding gown, getting ready for her special day. Shideh (Artemis Pebdani) is giving Zari (Nikki Massoud) a pedicure, announcing so everyone can hear, “Your toes are disgusting.” (There are a lot of bare feet throughout the play.) Nazanin (Marjan Neshat) makes adjustments to the dress while flirting with Rana (Nazanin Nour), who is très elegant in her shiny silk pajamas, smoking a cigarette as she does Salme’s hair.

As they continue to primp, they regale one another with a string of hysterical dirty jokes and good-natured insults. “I’m steaming out of my dress, Shideh,” Nazanin says, referring to her nether regions. “Ew,” Shideh replies. “My pussy could iron a shirt,” Nazanin adds. Rana asks, “Oh what kind of shirt?”

Shideh (Artemis Pebdani) has a lot to say as Nazanin (Marjan Neshat) applies makeup to Zari (Nikki Massoud) and Salme (Roxanna Hope Radja) hovers behind them (photo by Joan Marcus)

“If a man saw her toes, I think his penis would fall off,” Shideh says about Zari. Rana admits, “Silk does not breathe well. Whatever you’re smelling is me and I don’t want to talk about it.” And Zari advises Salme what to do when encountering a man’s member: “When you first see one, smile. Smile so big. Smile bigger than you’ve ever smiled in your life. Like you need to swallow a plate.”

It’s an enchanting scene in which we fall in love with the characters while learning key facts about each of them: Shideh is studying to be a doctor and is considering going to school in America; Salme is the most religious one, regularly praying, believing that you “can’t jinx G-d’s will”; the easygoing Zari is in the market for a husband; and the ultracool Rana and the occasionally mean Nazanin plan to avoid marriage and children, although Nazanin lets it be known that she wants to eventually return to Iran after living it up in Miami. (Coincidentally, in English, Neshat plays a teacher who made a life for her and her family in London but came back to Karaj, perhaps regretting that decision.)

A year later it is Zari who is getting married, but a pall is cast over the proceedings when Shideh mentions Rana’s name; Rana, who is Jewish, has gone missing, along with her parents and brother. Salme is trying to find her, but Nazanin says, as if trying to convince herself, “If she wanted to vanish into thin air, with no trace, no word, without shit, then that’s how she wanted to do it.”

Nazanin (Marjan Neshat) and Salme (Roxanna Hope Radja) cement a bond in Wish You Were Here (photo by Joan Marcus)

But as we soon discover, Nazanin has a problem with people leaving, whether it’s a friend moving away with a new husband, another friend going off to study abroad, or a best friend disappearing in a country becoming ever-more dangerous. As many Iranians choose to escape their homeland because of war and an oppressive regime, Nazanin feels stuck, resenting those who attempt to make a new life for themselves and their family instead of getting out while she still can. It’s a bitter pill, especially when seen in retrospect. “Why don’t I want to leave?” she wonders. It’s a question people ask themselves every day across the globe.

Wish You Were Here is directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch (Animal, The Year of Magical Thinking) with a warm and welcoming intimacy that invites us into these women’s complex lives with, as the characters often say, “no judging.” The comforting set is by Arnulfo Maldonado, with handsome costumes by Sarah Laux, subtle lighting by Reza Behjat, and meticulous sound by Sinan Refik Zafar and Brian Hickey.

The hundred-minute play was also written by Toossi as a love letter to her mother and her mother’s friends, immigrants who started all over in the United States; parts of the story are based on real experiences. Toossi, who was born and raised in Orange County, California, and is now based in Brooklyn, has beautifully depicted the ups and downs, the sheer joys and the petty jealousies, that define female friendship.

Over the course of thirteen years, Iran underwent tremendous change, but Toossi does not focus so much on world events as on how they impact the women’s relationships with each other; the scenes involving only two of the women at a time are particularly emotional and heart-wrenching as Toossi explores the many layers of attachment, mere cordiality, and sincere love the women share. While Salme is afraid of pulling off the tape when Nazanin is waxing her legs for fear of hurting her physically, Zari is not afraid to tell Nazanin, “You have a way of making me feel really lonely.”

The cast is exceptional; it truly does seem like you’re watching five friends go about their daily existence, dealing with love and loss as they dance wildly to a song on the radio, hide under a table during a bombing, kneel down to pray to Mecca, or deliver yet another pussy joke. In between scenes, the actors make minor changes to the living room to indicate a shift in location, moving around tables or opening the curtain in the back to reveal a bright garden. It’s as if the five actors, and the audience, need a short break from the intensity of the play while getting ready to see what the next year holds in store for everyone. I can’t wait to see what Toossi has in store for all of us next.

DAN CODY’S YACHT

Cara Russo (Kristen Bush) is unsure what to do when Kevin O’Neill (Rick Holmes) offers her an unexpected opportunity in Dan Cody’s Yacht (photo by Joan Marcus)

Manhattan Theatre Club
MTC at New York City Center – Stage I
Tuesday – Sunday through July 8, $90
212-581-1212
dancodysyacht.com
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

Anthony Giardina’s Dan Cody’s Yacht has several gaping holes you could, well, pilot a luxury boat through. However, the Manhattan Theatre Club world premiere, which opened last night at City Center’s Stage I, still offers an intriguing ride despite the choppy waters it navigates through income and education inequality. The two-hour, two-act play begins in September 2014 in the suburbs of Boston, as smarmy financial wizard Kevin O’Neill (Rick Holmes) tries to bribe high school English teacher Cara Russo (Kristen Bush) to change his son’s failing grade on a paper on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the book that altered the course of his own life. “Incorruptible Cara Russo. I’ve heard about it, now I’ve seen it for myself,” he says, clunkily establishing the core of the narrative. “Chosen by her peers to be the powerful voice of the teachers in our town’s current, ill-advised plunge into liberal American mediocrity. The proposal to meld the two school districts — depressed Patchett, thriving Stillwell. To join the drug addicted, poverty ridden, low achieving children of your little town to the drug addicted but still high achieving children of mine.”

Cara, a divorced single mother, lives in Patchett, where her teenage daughter, Angela (Casey Whyland), goes to school, but she teaches in Stillwell, where Kevin’s teenage son, Conor (John Kroft), is slacking off. Cara is an important member of the committee that will decide whether the merging of the two very different schools, one filled with the haves, the other the have-nots, will be put to a public vote. Cara’s friend Cathy Conz (Roxanna Hope Radja), a working mother whose daughter, Britney, has just made the Patchett debate team, is not so sure that the plan to combine the schools is a good one. “Our high school is our town. We lose that, what have we got?” she says. “We ship our kids over the river to become second class citizens, they come back, how do they respect anything here?” Kevin invites Cara to join his small investing group, where he and other Stillwell parents, Geoff and Pamela Hossmer (Jordan Lage and Meredith Forlenza) and Alice Tuan (Laura Kai Chen), meet monthly, pooling their money to play the market as they drink wine and eat sushi. Cara argues that she doesn’t have any excess cash to get involved in “financial chicanery,” but Kevin convinces her to give it a try, and it all goes well, until it doesn’t.

Kevin O’Neill (Rick Holmes) heads an investment club with Geoff Hossmer (Jordan Lage), Pamela Hossmer (Meredith Forlenza), Cara Russo (Kristen Bush), and Alice Tuan (Laura Kai Chen) in MTC world premiere (photo by Joan Marcus)

Giardina (Living at Home) and Tony-winning director Doug Hughes (Doubt, The Father), who previously collaborated on the Drama Desk–nominated Lincoln Center production The City of Conversation, which also featured Bush, steer the ship through an extremely bumpy first act with several key flaws. The discussion about getting Angela into Stillwell seems moot, as it is way too late for her to switch schools in time to affect her chances to go to a better college. There is a serious ethical question about Kevin, who works professionally in private equity, running an investment club, even though the prospect of illegally sharing inside information is brought up. And it seems impossible for Cara to make enough money to afford to move out of Patchett as quickly as she plans to. But the second act is stronger than the first, delving deeper into the characters’ motivations and what they want out of life, which is more complicated than just more money and better education.

“Nobody told us to care about ourselves first,” Cara tells Cathy as she explains why she joined Kevin’s club. “Nobody told us that. And say what you will about that man, that is what he is saying to me.” Later, she adds, “Tell me. Go ahead, say it. You don’t want this. You want mediocrity. You’re happy with mediocrity. You’re happy with this,” referring to their dreary lives in Patchett. Kevin treats finance like sex; when he talks about the opportunities that can open up for Cara, he is practically seducing her. Kevin himself was inspired by the section of The Great Gatsby when the protagonist, then known as James Gatz, rows out to a yacht owned by the much older Dan Cody and becomes his personal assistant; Kevin believes that Gatsby and Cody had a sexual relationship, something that might have ultimately influenced his own life and career. Meanwhile, Angela is reading a worn copy of Leon Uris’s Exodus, more than hinting at the potential exodus of Patchett students across the river to Stillwell. It is small touches like these that rescue the play from drowning itself in murkiness.

Conor O’Neill (John Kroft) and Angela Russo (Casey Whyland) are caught in the middle of adult shenanigans in new play by Anthony Giardina (photo by Joan Marcus)

The main players, making their way across John Lee Beatty’s effective living-room, classroom, and kitchen sets, give solid performances, particularly Bush (The Common Pursuit, Taking Care of Baby), representing a middle class seeking to improve its lot in life against the odds. Holmes (Junk, Matilda) manages to avoid being a completely unlikable villain, although Kevin says some very hurtful things without regret. Whyland, a 2018 NYU graduate, and Kroft, in his New York debut, are both sympathetic as the teens caught in the middle, not fully understanding, or caring, about the towns’ battle over their future. It also brings to light another central focus of the play: fear. Various characters express being afraid they haven’t done enough for their children (or they’ve done too much), being afraid of change, being afraid of believing they deserve better, even being afraid of money itself. “I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth,” Nick Carraway explains at the beginning of The Great Gatsby. In Dan Cody’s Yacht, Giardina attempts to explore that inequality specifically relating to the education gap in contemporary society, though emerging with decidedly mixed test results.

THE STRANGEST

Layali (Roxanna Hope Radja) shows off her charms to her shocked family in Betty Shamieh’s THE STRANGEST

Fourth Street Theatre
83 East Fourth St. between Bowery & Second Ave.
Through April 1, $25-$45
www.brownpapertickets.com

Commissioned to write a theatrical adaptation of Albert Camus’s 1947 existential classic, The Stranger, playwright Betty Shamieh, the American-born daughter of Arab immigrants, chose instead to focus on what Camus didn’t write: the story of the nameless Arab man shot on the beach by the central character, Meursault, without reason or remorse. Continuing at the Fourth Street Theatre through April 1, The Strangest takes place in an Algerian storytelling café, where an audience of approximately forty to fifty people sit on cushions on benches or the floor, gathered around small tables where they can pour themselves cups of thick Turkish coffee. Umm (Jacqueline Antaramian), a woman in her early forties, has decided to share her personal tale, infiltrating the strictly all-male story competition. “I will show you three young men. You won’t know which son of Algeria would be shot until the end of the story. No magic carpets in the story either. Just an assassination of a child I bore, and the French man who shot him down will feel nothing before, during, or after. Strange, isn’t it?” she says. The tale Umm tells is a murder mystery with a sexy femme fatale, Layali (Roxanna Hope Radja), Umm’s niece, courted by Umm’s three sons: sensitive artist Nader (Juri Henley-Cohn), brutal thief Nemo (Andrew Guilarte), and meek shoemaker Nounu (Louis Sallan). Umm weaves many layers into her tale, including the fate of her village, her house, and her husband, Abu (Alok Tewari), a onetime master orator who is now a disabled mumbler; the flashback in which he tells a unique version of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and declares his love for Umm is captivating and romantic. But when Layali brings home her fiancé, literally a French smoking gun (Brendan Titley), the rest of the family is disconcerted and upset, setting into motion a fast-unfolding series of ferocious events.

Sensitive artist Nader (Juri Henley-Cohn) makes a plea to his mother, Umm (Jacqueline Antaramian), in world premiere at Fourth Street Theatre

In researching Arab storytelling cafés, Shamieh (The Black Eyed, Roar, Fit for a Queen) went to Aleppo, Syria, in 2011, just as antigovernment protests were beginning there; sadly, the cafés she visited have since been destroyed, adding another sobering layer to the show, which already references racism, colonialism, rape, the current refugee crisis, and the shootings of black men, women, and children by white police officers. Director May Adrales (Vietgone, Luce) makes fine use of Daniel Zimmerman’s intimate, boxlike set; the actors, in Becky Bodurtha’s colorful costumes, enter and exit on two sides through wall curtains, the floor carpeted by numerous Oriental rugs. The uniformly strong cast is highlighted by the powerful acting of the three sons, particularly Henley-Cohn as Nader and Guilarte as Nemo, anchored by Tewari (The Band’s Visit, Awake and Sing!) and Antaramian (Dr. Zhivago, Mary Stuart) as the mourning mother; her pain is palpable as tears roll down her face. The play is filled with surprises, including a big-time, completely unexpected twist at the end. In the storytelling cafés, the audience votes on who tells the best story; with The Strangest, you won’t go wrong putting your money (a mere twenty-five dollars) on Shamieh and Adrales.

[An earlier version of this article misidentified Nemo as the shoemaker and Nounu as the thief; we regret the error.]