Theater review
“Wish you were here” may be a platitude — perhaps scrawled on a postcard from somewhere far away — but it’s also, in its heart, a plea, particularly when it comes to friends who are more like family.
Such are the friends in Sanaz Toossi’s joyful, powerful “Wish You Were Here,” now running at ArtsWest in a coproduction with Seda Iranian Theatre Ensemble and directed with surgical tenderness by Seda co-founder Naghmeh Samini.
We meet them en masse, howling with laughter: Salme (Newsha Farahani), a devout, devoted friend and the first of the group to get married; Zari (Shereen Khatibloo), a spacey sweetheart; intense aspiring doctor Shideh (Mahshad Zareeizadeh); Nazanin (Ainaz Azarhoush), an acerbic engineering student; and the effortlessly cool Rana (Parmida Ziaei), the latter two of whom make a pact to stay single and never have children.
“Wish You Were Here” takes place over 13 years in Karaj, Iran, beginning in 1978 right before the start of the Islamic Revolution, through the Iran-Iraq War and into the Gulf War. It’s also the start of these women’s adult lives — the first scene is set on Salme’s wedding day — and the play sees them through changes both monumental and inevitable.
Toossi writes wrenchingly ordinary scenes (if you’ll forgive an oxymoron) because she never fails to trust her audience, and finds external sources — in this play’s case, brief radio dispatches between scenes — to provide necessary context without forcing it unnaturally into dialogue.
She paints an affectionate portrait of female friendship, whether these women are painting each other’s nails and talking about sex, or complaining about mothers-in-law and talking about sex. “No judging” is a common refrain, someone is usually being (lovingly!) made fun of and someone always has to pee.
As Iran reels, “Wish” focuses on daily realities, both frustrating and comforting in their relentlessness. Yes, people still play backgammon and get their periods as bombs drop on their city. Yes, war is happening in these women’s lives, but it isn’t the story of their lives. As they navigate the shifting allegiances within their friend group, they’re also navigating uncertain political realities. Should they go back to school, now that the universities have reopened? Should they leave the country?
“Wish You Were Here” premiered off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in 2022, just a few months after the off-Broadway premiere of Toossi’s play “English,” which would go on to earn her the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. (Seda and ArtsWest also coproduced an excellent “English” in 2024.)
Seda pays particular, poetic attention to the visual world of its plays, thanks in part to company co-founder Ziaei (also this play’s scenic designer and co-costume consultant), who creates spaces that are simultaneously vibrant, precise and narratively efficient.
There’s nothing like people you’ve known long enough that you can’t really remember how you met. Those people are home, as much as any physical location, but what happens when home has to leave you? In presmartphone days, when long-distance calls were prohibitively expensive and video calls were the stuff of science fiction, leaving meant leaving.
Whether they stayed or left, all these women experienced a kind of destabilizing loss that many of us will never experience, and that is difficult to think about as Iranians are again suffering through a brutal war.
“I don’t even remember who I wanted to be,” Nazanin says (in a standout performance from Azarhoush), looking back on her past 13 years — and it’s a tiny, heart-shattering moment. Time only moves in one direction (as far as we know; don’t come for me, quantum folks), and no matter what forces have shaped the trajectory of one’s life, there are always moments when you look back on your younger self and say: I wish you were here.
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