When worlds collide, you usually find drama. They might be planets in a sci-fi movie, but those worlds can be earthbound and still create tectonic drama. The worlds that collide in Isfahan Blues are so very specific as to seem unlikely exemplifications for drama that could resonate beyond immediate boundaries. But the specifics can be unnervingly relevant in this new play that imagines a multicultural clash that takes place 50 years ago in a faraway place.
Playwright Torange Yeghiazarian (founder of the co-presenting Golden Thread Productions) had a handy research source: her mother, Vida Ghahremani, a former Iranian movie star with a love of jazz music. And the cultural component of the Cold War added another factual element to the scenario that Yeghiazarian has conjured. The same year that her parents opened a popular club in Tehran that embraced modern Western trends from decor to music, Duke Ellington and his orchestra arrived in Iran as part of a U.S. State Department-sponsored tour of the Middle East.
And so a situation that might seem manufactured becomes entirely plausible when a musician from Ellington's orchestra finds his way into Tehran's Club Cuccini after eluding his State Department keepers. That musician happens to be Billy Strayhorn, or at least a character modeled upon him, who was a legend who often chose to live in the shadows. The actual Strayhorn, openly gay but given a protective shield by the fatherly Ellington, was famously drawn to glamorous women. Renamed Ray Hamilton, he meets movie star Bella, and they decide to take a break from their regimented lives �" Bella from her controlling husband, and Ray from his guy-Friday service to Ellington.
The dialogue that Yeghiazarian has fashioned is often witty, intelligent, and of growing political ramifications in the Iran of 1963. It starts off at the music club where Bella holds court as various shady figures pass through. But the arrival of Ray, the Strayhorn character, creates a celebratory mood, and Ray seems to have a particular appreciation for a handsome young member of the house band. Bella, Ray, and Farid decide to make their own way to Isfahan, the next stop on the Ellington tour, but without letting anyone know of their private road trip.
Isfahan Blues is presented as a memory play, as scenes of the contemporary Bella (played by Ghahremani herself) and the spirit of the deceased Ray Hamilton (L. Peter Callender, who also plays the younger Hamilton) interrupt the action to reminisce, argue, and recall the bond they developed during their temporary escape from responsibility. The play opens with the Strayhorn-inspired character alone onstage ranting about racial issues as scenes from the Civil Rights struggles of the early 1960s are projected behind him. And then, puncturing the pontificating, the older Bella, seated to the side of the stage in an easy chair, snaps, "Get on with it." This is a play that knows how to have fun with itself.
As a road trip that starts as free and easy, cultural fissures begin to develop. Hamilton is seething with racial resentments that he mostly keeps under wraps, but they begin to come to the surface as Bella and traveling companion Farid reveal rather simplified notions of what it is actually like for a black man in the United States. But the flirtatious Farid, who may or may not be having an affair with Hamilton, doesn't let Ray's blackness absolve him in America's historic meddling in Iranian affairs. All three find themselves slapped down when a provincial police officer arrests them for being, in his mind, a prostitute, an African troublemaker, and a drug dealer.
Director Laura Hope's staging manages to keep the production moving as the action continually shifts to new locales. Too often, though, action itself ceases as characters end up sitting around tables for drawn-out discussions. The play, especially in the second act, could use some trimming without any dramatically detrimental effects.
As Ray Hamilton, L. Peter Callender (artistic director of co-presenter African-American Shakespeare Company) does vibrant but nuanced work as the musical genius filled with both bitterness and gratitude. Sofia Ahmad brings a vivacious personality to the young Vida, and while Ghahremani lends authentic gravitas to the older Vida, she was a bit tentative on her lines at last week's opening. As the fun-loving but politically smoldering Farid, Mohammad Talani offers a bouncingly idiosyncratic performance.
Because of copyright issues, only snippets of Ellington-Strayhorn compositions are used, but composer Marcus Shelby did create an in-the-style-of song to finish the show on a note of East-West peace that we are happy to take, even if only for a few minutes.
Isfahan Blues will run at Buriel Clay Theater through May 24. Tickets are $15-$34. Go to african-americanshakes.org or goldenthread.org.