THE NEW YORK SUN: Of Time and a Revolution: ‘Wish You Were Here’ Delivers an Intimate View of Iran
Before the plot of “Wish You Were Here” begins in earnest, there is a moment when the lights half-rise on a set of beige curtains that obscure the stage. A slight draft from behind coaxes them toward the audience, almost close enough to touch.
I caught myself instinctively reaching toward them. They were the color of my childhood home. I felt again my safe haven of girlhood, how it held me as my life unfolded behind the big living room window. The audience seemed to hold its breath. The lights dimmed again as the curtains caught the breeze, beckoning to us, pregnant with the past.
This gentle spell is broken as Zari, Nazanin, Rana, and Shideh rush the stage to prepare Salme for her wedding day. Laughter, anticipation, and profanity fill the small living room set all at once. One young woman remarks on the size of her friend’s toes, another about the heat, saying it is so hot her privates could iron a shirt.
Whether this contrast is part of the script or a product of Gaye Taylor Upchurch’s subtle direction, it is an apt beginning to Sanaz Toossi’s piece, which follows five Iranian girls’ journey into womanhood beginning in 1978.
In the span of 100 minutes, 13 years will elapse in this living room. We see three weddings, a med school acceptance, a pregnancy, a child, a disappearance, a death. A new friend, a consequential phone call. A wet dream about a dictator. The girls giggle and spar, cutting each other like glass and sewing each other up. We’re granted an uncannily intimate window into their safe haven as the world around them changes.
Outside, the Iranian Revolution roils. The Persian monarchy falls. The Islamic Republic rises to power, and the Iraq-Iran War begins. The young women cling to normalcy as long as they can as their home country becomes increasingly untenable. The laughter dies down. The curtains go from open to closed. The radio is drowned out by an air-raid siren. Conversations that had taken place on couches are now under a table as the women seek shelter from incoming missiles.
Eventually, they must all make the decision to join or resist the Iranian Diaspora. The women leave the stage one by one, scene by scene, until none but Nazanin remain, left alone with the consequences of her indecision and ghosts of her former life.
“What happened to the sirens?” she remarks. “I sort of miss the noise of them.”
The creative direction is understated. The passage of time is signified by subtle lighting and sound cues. The set and costumes are simple and apt. This allows the all-Iranian cast’s brilliant, boisterous performances to speak for themselves. The resulting piece strikes an illusive balance: specific and broad, joyful and weighty. Crude but not harsh, nostalgic but not precious.
Although its characters become refugees, “Wish You Were Here” does masterfully what so many wartime pieces can only attempt: It tells a story set in a hyper-political context and avoids the pitfalls therein. These women, who could easily be tokenized, are familiarized. There are no victims here. They do not want your pity. They want to be seen in all of their beautiful, tragic humanity.
“What makes a play political? Doesn’t every play exist within a set of politics?” asks Ms. Toossi in a Playwrights Perspective essay. “Must a play be political if the events of the play are affected by the politics of the play’s setting? … Ultimately, it doesn’t matter to me.”
More than a political play, “Wish You Were Here” is a bildungsroman. I’m reminded of Holden Caulfield’s fascination with the Museum of Natural History in “Catcher in the Rye”: “Everything always stayed right where it was … the only thing that would be different would be you.”
Save for a few details — the dress on the mannequin, the bars on the windows — Nazanin’s living room never changes. Even the cockroaches under the carpet remain the same. Despite her best efforts, though, this doesn’t stop the world from turning under her feet. Eventually, after 13 years have elapsed, she must confront the difference between who she is and who she once wanted to be.
Published May 2nd, 2022.
Image: Blake Zidell and Associates