'Avaaz' spreads joy with a story of embracing roots while achieving the American dream
Few if any themes get explored more frequently in American theaters than the immigrant experience, except generational family dynamics.
In fact, Chicago Shakespeare has two plays running simultaneously that take on both.
In its larger Yard Theatre, the play “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” takes us inside a hair salon in Harlem to meet a suite of West African immigrant women, including the entrepreneurial owner and her dreamer daughter.
And now “Avaaz” opens at the much smaller Upstairs Studio with a likable, high-spirited one-person show about one woman’s journey as a Jewish Iranian refugee in Los Angeles, and her close but testy relationship with her artsy, gay son. This one’s a true story, in which that son, writer-performer Michael Shayan, embodies his mother, here called Roya.
Both stories are familiar, relatable, yet energetic and fresh. And very, very American, at a moment when the word “diversity” has taken on political toxicity.
Shayan comes out to chat with audience members, in character, shortly before “Avaaz” starts, which sets the welcoming, cheery mood he sustains throughout. He doesn’t attempt a full-on actorly transformation into an older woman. He maintains his beard and voice but adopts an accent and wears a flamboyant outfit, the mix of Iranian maximalism and Hollywood glamor that defines Tehrangeles. It’s quite spectacular: a shimmering gold and black caftan, sequined slacks, a mid-width Gucci belt, and large cat-eye glasses.
It's not easy for a background to stand up to such excess, but the eye-feast of a set here does. Designer Beowulf Boritt fills the space with luxurious drapes, giant mirrors framed with flowers, a half-dozen or so luxe chandeliers.
At the center sits a “Haft-Sin” table, which Shayan explains is a Persian tradition for the springtime new year called Nowruz, replete with symbolic elements, all of which, in Farsi, begin with the same “s” sound: garlic (“seer”) representing health, apples (“seeb”) representing beauty, wheatgrass (“sabzeh”) representing rebirth, and so on. But where one garlic bulb or apple would do the symbolic trick, here we have an abundance of everything. It’s like a Passover seder with a palette of matzoh.
The idea is that Roya is throwing a party for the holiday, and she hopes that her son, her only child, will show up. She hasn’t seen him in months, ever since they had a big fight over familiar topics, mainly that she wants him to lose weight and get a real career, not this writing thing. (By the way, Jaja’s daughter is also a writer, the emblem of what an immigrant mother disapproves of.)
In the interim, Roya fills the audience in on her story, often inspired by the theme of one of the Haft-Sin components. The vinegar, for example, represents patience, but is in another context a disturbing metaphor used to suggest that, at 20, an unmarried woman has started to spoil.
This transition leads to Roya’s story of how she ended up married at a young age. She had left Iran when her activist father was jailed and stayed for a time with a nice couple. But at the very first opportunity, the host was quick to agree to an arranged marriage for her, and she felt trapped. The relationship was awful, even after she had her son. A trial separation became permanent without further discussion.
Although the tale certainly has its dark sides, the overall tone in the production directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel (who helmed the production of “Judgment Day” with Jason Alexander) is of joy and humor and triumph, very much a story of achieving the American dream while embracing where you came from.
Shayan matches his mother’s witty personality with his own — Emmy-nominated, natch! — writing skills and crack timing, and we end up with a slew of stand-up-like quips and a certain offbeat English-as-a-second-language poetry. Explaining the death of one of her favorite singers, Roya tells us, “Her heart attacked her.”
As with so many one-person shows, it’s challenging to fashion an effective climax, and I found the conclusion to be a bit confusing; I wasn’t sure of the intended effect of a recording where Michael interviews his mother about her past. On the one hand, the creation of this show obviously represents their coming to mutual understanding, but his mother’s reticence on the recording also suggested, perhaps unintentionally, that he had theatricalized her in a manner at odds with reality.
Still, this is a very enjoyable show, filled with humor even when it gets serious, and deeply expressive of Iranian culture, American culture, and the hybrid that happens in our great nation of immigrants.