ajhlovestheatre

WISH YOU WERE HERE

by Sanaz Toossi

directed by Sepy Baghaei 

Gate Theatre, London – until 23 November 2024

https://www.gatetheatre.co.uk/wish-you-were-here-uk-premiere/

Iranian-American writer Sanaz Toossi is having an excellent year on UK stages. The RSC premiered English, her exquisite meditation on diaspora and the power of language to connect and alienate, at Stratford-upon-Avon before moving it to London’s Kiln for a sold out season. Now there’s Wish You Were Here, first seen off-Broadway in 2022, a honey-sweet, bitter-as-herbs study of female friendship against a tumultuously changing political and social landscape in Iran between the years 1978 and 1991. In Sepy Baghaei’s beautiful staging for the Gate, this remarkable five hander turns out to be as wise and engrossing as its predecessor, and even more emotionally engaging. 

When we first meet the quintet of friends, in party mode as they prepare for the wedding of one of their number, it’s 1978, the year that saw the Iranian revolution that would strip women of many of their fundamental rights and deny them the opportunities to take up careers they’d studied for. Toossi’s dialogue refers to the impending change (“there’s static in the air”) but these women are mostly having fun; they swear, smoke, discuss sex and the human anatomy with eye-watering frankness, and snap at each other.  

Initially, the group seems to divide too neatly into archetypes: there’s laidback, flighty Zari (Maryam Grace), straight laced Shideh (Isabella Nefar), diplomatic, sweet Salme (Emily Renée), intelligent, acerbic Nazanin (Afsaneh Dehrouyeh) and her best friend, too-cool-for-school Rana (Juliette Motamed), who happens to be the only Jew amongst these Muslims. This being Iran before it became a theocracy, that’s not an issue…at first. The years pass and the relationships, and these women’s lives, change, but what could otherwise be an engaging but not necessarily very original story of female friendships is lent urgency and piquancy by the setting.

The acting has a lovely, naturalistic quality that precisely matches Toossi’s writing, balancing delicacy and nuance with moments of real dramatic meat and some pretty outrageous humour. If at first you feel like you’re eavesdropping, as the play draws on, it becomes quietly riveting, and very very moving. Wish You Were Here celebrates friendship while lamenting that time and circumstances can rend asunder even the strongest of connections. “Change is good. Right?” asks one of the group, before the seismic events in their country have fully kicked in; in fact, for these vibrant young women, it’s hardly a good thing at all. The yearning for a different life in America prompts the question of how differently these lives would pan out in a different setting.

Baghaei’s production, played out in traverse, steers a cool, clear path between the realistic and the fanciful: a wedding dress lifted from the body of one woman onto that of another denotes the passage of time and a shift in attention; an intimate long distance phone call between two of the friends is wryly observed from the sidelines by the others. It’s a compelling mix of dreamlike and harsh reality. Tomás Palmer’s set design is a masterpiece of plushly carpeted late twentieth century kitsch that simultaneously cocoons the five characters while casting them adrift in a larger, not always benign, void.

The maturing, in some cases hardening, of the women is meticulously done, and so are the powershifts, changes in allegiance, and the subtle -and not so subtle- cruelties within their relationships. “I used to be so dumb. I would give anything to feel dumb again” declares Zari wistfully, and one fully understands her longing. Each of the actresses fleshes out her character’s journey with infinite skill. Grace’s Zari and Dehrouyeh’s Nazarin are perhaps the most contrasting of the women and have the most volatile big swings to play, and they make it real edge-of-your-seat stuff. It’ll be a long time before I forget the look in Motamed’s eyes as Rana realises just how far removed she is from her best friend, or Dehrouyeh’s final, cathartic breakdown before pulling herself together and getting on with her life. Really though, all the acting is flawless, so good it barely feels like acting at all.

The 1990 scene where Nazarin acquires a new friend (played by Nefar but so closely to her main character as to be confusing) feels like a bit of a non sequitur, but that’s a tiny misstep in a rich and rewarding evening. Wish You Were Here channels individual life experience through the broader canvas of turbulent recent history; it’s about love, loss, what binds people together outside immediate family. Humanity, intelligence and theatricality meld almost seamlessly together in this affection-infused piece…it’s very special.