By Stuart Miller . . .
Karya is a typical seventeen-year-old girl: mortified by her mother, simultaneously jealous and disgusted by her best friend’s sex life and trying to figure out things about her body and her identity. But Karya is about to get herself into serious trouble of the kind most teens are fortunate to never even imagine.
Fish, Melis Aker’s funny and poignant play (at the WP Theater), is set in London in 2016, where suspicions about immigrants are driving the country ever closer to Brexit. Karya’s family is from Turkey and a year ago her older brother disappeared completely and her mother, Ceyda, now believes he is overseas with ISIS, either voluntarily or against his will.
Karya (Yasmin Rand-Lind) feels like she’s living in limbo, without her brother, but also without being really seen or understood by her distracted, mourning mother (Roxanna Hope Radja). So, on a dare from her friend Libby (Alyssa May Gold), Karya goes on various ISIS-run Twitter accounts to try and find her brother. When her straightforward approach fails, she tries seducing a terrorist, hoping for information. Instead, she gets $300 to fly to Syria to join him.
Emboldened, Karya realizes she can take something—money, pride—from the terrorists who broke her family, so the new seductress dons a hijab but pulls down her top as she catfishes ISIS repeatedly.
If this thriller plot were the entirety of Fish, it would be plenty entertaining, but the show’s depth comes because that storyline equally shares the spotlight with Karya’s daily life.
We see Karya sharing a bathroom stall at school with Libby as she talks about the UTI her newly inaugurated sex life has bestowed upon her; perhaps it’s the school uniforms but their scenes, with the raunchy but tender conversations while coping with extreme violence in the background of their lives, bring to mind the great Irish TV series Derry Girls (which Akers said in a talkback is an influence).
We also see Karya sharing swimming lessons with her mother and her brother’s ex-girlfriend Isha (Sara Haider) as they compete for the attention of (and sexually harass) the hot and sweet instructor Jon (Kario Marcel).
The blowups between mother and daughter are spot on, both specific to this tense moment in their family life and universal. Of equal importance is that Aker’s writing is generous, so the play is not solely about Karya’s perspective; Ceyda’s fears and frustrations concerning both of her children, her exhaustion from working as a nurse, her loneliness as a single mom, her yearning for the Turkey of her childhood are sensitively written.
While the entire cast is strong, Radja as Ceyda is the stand-out, whether she’s softly reminiscing or stridently shouting, throwing a hand on her hip to flirt with Jon or blinking back tears as she tries to find hope as she copes with the uncertainty about her son.
One side note: while both Ranz-Lind and Gold are good as the teenage girls, the casting or the directing of the teens is the only piece of the play that falls for conventional tropes: the sexually desired Libby is conventionally pretty and Karya, who has no boyfriend, is depicted as hopelessly frumpy. That was a cliched choice: Libby could have been less pretty and still attracting boyfriends by virtue of her carefree adventurousness while Karya could have been sexier but alone because she’s seething with anger, much of it stemming from the family trauma.
Tatiana Pandiani’s imaginative staging also enhances Aker’s writing. Neon lights throb with the urgent energy of teenagers in heat and Pandiani also finds creative solutions to the challenges of bringing to life Twitter conversations between ISIS members upstage and Karya and the swimming lessons in a waterless “pool” downstage.
Aker also pulls off a great ending for the play—she doesn’t tie everything up neatly with the missing brother, but she gives us a moment that is realistic and fully satisfying for both Karya and Ceyda. Life will go on and maybe the family can begin to heal. It’s all they can ask for.
Fish is playing at WP Theater, 2162 Broadway, 4th Floor through October 25th. It runs ninety minutes with no intermission. For tickets, please click here.
Photos by Joan Marcus.
Headline photo: Alyssa May Gold and Yasmin Ranz-Lind in Fish.
