Film is a medium that feeds you realism. Theater asks that you feed yourself, that the suggestions of time and place are enough for a stimulated imagination to fill in the details. But there are times when a visual prompt is necessary, as when a laundrette is transformed from a sad dump into a glittering palace. Send in the Maytags.
That transformation is probably the best remembered scene from the 1985 movie My Beautiful Laundrette, and while no one expects rows of washers and dryers to be hauled out in the stage adaptation, New Conservatory Theatre Center's production makes no attempt to offer anything beyond the characters' descriptions of what we are supposed to be seeing. Some resourceful use of light strands, creative cardboard, or a disco ball that must be in the prop closet could help close this disconnect.
That this key moment is so mildly rendered is disappointing, but what surrounds it is generally engaging. The fact that the source movie is fondly recalled but hazily remembered by many helps sustain attention in Andy Graham and Roger Parsley's adaptation of the Hanif Kureishi film script. There are laughs, romance, skullduggery, social conflicts, and family drama all packed into the play, and director Andrew Nance and his strong cast help breathe fresh life into the material.
The 1980s London period has been maintained, and there are repeated references to Margaret Thatcher. They are invariably glowing, and their source may be surprising. A successful Pakistani businessman extols her up-from-your-bootstraps message, looks down on most of the Anglo community, and sets up his nephew in business rather than see him on the despised dole. That business, of course, is a laundrette, and aimless Omar now has a vision.
But it is a vision that he is determined to share with boyhood friend Johnny, now a street punk with occasional fascist inclinations, with whom he had apparently shared something more than a handshake before they were reined in by their specific ethnic worlds. That Omar is hanging out with a lower-class white kid seems more disturbing to his family than the homosexual bond that is vaguely suspected.
While there are several running subplots involving marital affairs, drug running, and arranged marriages, what is essential in this story is that Omar and Johnny come across as likable despite their occasionally dubious actions. We have a pair of winners at NCTC, with Javi Harnly's Omar and Robert Rushin's Johnny pulling us into their story and rooting for their success. Their physical encounters immediately move offstage whenever the heat begins to rise, discretion not afforded to Omar's uncle and his mistress, who go at it front and center.
Uncle Nasser is probably the most entertaining character in the play, with his commandeering personality and startling pronouncements, and Keith Stephenson turns this bombastic character into a force of nature. In many ways, Cat Luedtke is his equal as his brash and determined mistress who is tired of playing second fiddle. As Nasser's daughter, Radhika Rao displays comic savvy as a young woman usually being shunted around by the men in her life. Daniel Redmond oozes danger as small-time hoodlum Salim, and Ravi Bhatnagar gives gentle life to Omar's broken-down father with one big speech left in him.
High marks to dialect coach Patricia Reynoso, working with both English and Pakistani accents that never rang untrue to this ear. Christian Mejila's lighting perhaps could help more in creating the atmospheres that Dean Shibuya's modular set does not. So what is My Beautiful Laundrette without a beautiful laundrette? Maybe something like a clothes washer that does its job up until the spin cycle.
My Beautiful Laundrette will run at New Conservatory Theatre Center through Dec. 22. Tickets are $25-$45. Go to 861-8972 or nctcsf.org.