By Shelley A. Sackett
Jewish Journal
Iranian-American playwright Sanaz Toossi covers a lot of ground in “Wish You Were Here,” at Gloucester Stage Company through Aug. 25. She follows the evolution of a group of friends from 1978 to 1991 in Karaj, Iran, an industrial city 26 miles from Tehran. The revolutionary political and societal upheavals experienced during these years are the backdrop for Toossi’s bigger focus: The everchanging tides of female friendship.
The play opens in a lavish apartment with Persian-inspired décor. Two women hover over a third swathed in a billowing wedding dress. Another, wearing a short kimono and huge pink curlers, drapes over a couch, a cigarette dangling from her hand. A fifth slouches against the wall. All appear to be in their late teens/early 20s.
Suddenly, the set springs to life, all five women speaking to and over each other.
The friends have gathered to prepare Salme, the first to get married and the most religious of the five. Shideh neurotically frets over whether she will get into medical school. Nazarin, a sullen eye–roller, plans to become an engineer. She and best friend Rana, the kimono girl, vow never to marry and have children. Zari, the youngest of the group, longs for sex.
Although set in 1978 Karaj, these five could be straight out of the pajama party scene in “Grease.” The atmosphere crackles with pop culture and the promise of youthful dreams of adventure, travel, and intimacy. The girls can hear political protests outside the window, but unconcerned, they ignore the shape-shifting world around them.
Over the next 100 minutes, we will drop in on this living room and this group another 10 times, following them from 1978 until 1991. Mirroring the upheaval experienced by their country (from the shah’s exile to the Islamic crackdown and revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini to the American hostage crisis to the Iran-Iraq War), these five will face marriage, loss, the impact of misogynist religious zealotry, and the torment of dreams snuffed out.
Its first intrusion comes when they gather the next year for Zari’s wedding.
There is turmoil in the streets. The shah is out and Khomeini is in. Rana, the “cool Jewish girl” and Nazanin’s best friend and her entire family, is missing. They departed suddenly, leaving dishes in the sink and no clues. No one has seen or heard from them.
Before the shah’s exile, Jews lived safely beside their Muslim fellow Iranians, flourishing and blending. Jews began settling in Iran around 2,700 years ago, and their years under the shah during his reform plan of 1964-1979 are considered a golden age. In 1978, the Iranian Jewish population numbered 80,000 and the vast majority was middle or upper-class. There were 30 synagogues in Tehran alone.
With the Islamic Revolution in 1978, all that changed overnight. Jews became enemies of the Islamic Republic – Zionists in league with Israel. Over two-thirds emigrated rather than face certain confiscation of their property and even execution.
Each girl deals with the loss of Rana in different ways. “She’s fine,” Nazanin says, although, as another points out, “A whole family of Jews missing is usually not a good sign.” Only Salme tries to find her through prayer and the internet.
As religious piety and intolerance increasingly rule the land, the group dwindles further. Salme embraces religion and prayer, but meets an untimely death when she drowns while swimming in her burka. Shideh takes the opposite path, fleeing to the United States to study medicine. Nazarin and Zari, never close, now seek solace in each other.
“Do you love me because I’m the only one left?” Zari asks when they rekindle their friendship out of desperation and loneliness. Zari applies for a green card “just to be safe” and Nazarin is caught up in the anguish of disappointment and confusion.
Nazanin disdains prayer, but believes in its power. She wonders every day how her life might have turned out had she been able to become an engineer, but she refuses Zari’s offer to get her a green card. “Why,” she asks aloud, “Don’t I want to leave?”
Toossi revisits the same meaty and timely themes of emigration, national identity, home, and displacement she so brilliantly tackled in her Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “English.” “Who do you think of when you think of where you’re from?” she asks through her characters. “What defines you? Is it a place? The people? Shared experiences? Where you grew up? Where you live now?”
Unfortunately, “Wish You Were Here” misses the high mark set by “English.” Toossi doesn’t flesh out these girls’ backgrounds and individualities; they lack nuance and depth. They live in an impenetrable bubble, teetering on a cataclysmic tipping point, yet we have a hard time even caring.
We also have a hard time following the play’s storyline because Toossi provides few contextual clues. There is a timeline in the playbill (which is most helpful if read BEFORE the play starts), but that doesn’t take the place of scripted points of reference.
Nonetheless, Toossi proffers gifts, most notably compassionate, multilayered glimpses of Iranian society. Several scenes, although also speed bumps in the drama’s flow, are poignant reminders of the beauty and mystery at the heart of Islam.
There are joyful elements of the traditional music, dress, and custom. The full silence during Salme’s long prayer scene lets the audience (and the less observant and devoted girls) through the keyhole of the sweet, nourishing elements of a religion that has been hijacked and weaponized by militant male power-grabbers determined to dominate women and eradicate infidels.
It’s too bad Toossi didn’t explore this element more. Who knows? That might have been the magic ingredient that could add a sorely lacking third dimension to her characters and elevate this play to the level we know she has the chops to write.
For more information, go to gloucesterstage.com.
InSights 