<b>✭✭✭</b>✩✩
<b>by Tara Grammy and Tom Arthur Davis, directed by Tom Arthur Davis
Pandemic Theatre, Toronto Fringe Festival, Tarragon Theatre Extra Space, Toronto
July 4-14, 2012;
Toronto Centre for the Arts, Toronto,
July 25, 27-29, 2012
</b>
“Fares for Transport”
Pandemic Theatre had a hit with its solo show <i>Mahmoud</i> that premiered in March 2011. Now the show is playing to sold-out houses at the Toronto Fringe Festival and it is easy to see why. Actor and co-author Tara Grammy is a charismatic performer adept at physical movement and comic timing. She switches among her three very different characters – four, if you count the younger and older versions of herself as separate – in an instant. The show spends much of its 55 minutes as a broad comedy and only in its last 15 minutes or less mines the more serious veins of its subject matter that it could at least have suggested much earlier on in the action.
The engaging title character is a taxi driver in Toronto who was an electrical engineer in Tehran before he emigrated to Canada 25 years ago. Instead of complaining of an immigration system that doesn’t recognize the validity of his degree, Mahmoud uses his time driving his taxi to extol the virtues of his home country to us, the audience, or to his passengers. He dwells on its ancient history and especially on the 14th-century poet Hafez. Why he and his wife left a country he loves so much to live in Toronto is a question not revealed until the end.
Two characters who eventually ride in Mahmoud’s cab, are Tara, and aspiring actor, and Emanuelos de Mille Boneros Testosteronos, a gay Spanish cologne salesman. Though the audience found these characters amusing, I found both Tara as a young girl and Emanuelos far too caricatured to enjoy. Tara is an Iranian-Canadian girl who hates being “ethnic”. She worries about extra facial hair and dyes her hair blond to try to win the boyfriend of her dreams from her hated rival Nicole. Her various audition numbers are fun but Grammy’s portrayal of the young Tara is too cutesy. When she becomes the older Tara it is quite a relief. Though a versatile actor, she finds to her dismay that agents can only “sell” her as an “Arab” character.
Emanuelos is supposed to be flamboyant, but Grammy makes his so effeminate I frequently had to remind myself he was supposed to a gay male instead of an outrageous female. The worst aspect of Emanuelos is that he is made to seem such an airhead that it undermines the taste of his Iranian boyfriend Behnam, who has gone back to Iran for his grandfather’s funeral, and blunts the impact of the negative news Emanuelos receives near the end. Emanuelos’s ride in Mahmoud’s cab ends early because Mahmoud can’t stand gay men. The event is portrayed but Grammy and Davis never allow Mahmoud to see any parallel between his prejudice toward Emanuelos and society’s prejudice towards “Arabic-looking” people.
The primary flaw of the play in general is that it brings up a large number of important topics like homophobia, racial prejudice, prejudice against immigrants without fully exploring any of them. Even when Mahmoud finally tells us (and Tara) why he left Iran, he doesn’t seem to realize the contradiction between the modern country he left and the ancient country he praises. Tara’s reaction to his gruesome story is unclear. As directed, we don’t know whether she is physically acting out her reaction to Mahmoud’s story or acting it out in fact, having transformed his story to art.
<i>Mahmoud</i> has the potential to be as moving as it is humorous, but in its present form Grammy and Davis seem loath to linger on the pain of any of their characters. At least, the play closes in silence, allowing all the questions it raises at least a few moments to rise to the surface.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a <i>Stage Door</i> exclusive.
Photo: Tara Grammy as Mahmoud. ©2012 Linn Øyen Farley.
For tickets, visit <a href="http://fringetoronto.com">http://fringetoronto.com</a>.
<b>2012-07-10</b>
<b>Mahmoud</b>