Theater Review by Carol Rocamora . . . .
We learn that he was bitten by a spider at the age of six. We learn that she wanted to be a ballerina at the age of twelve. We learn that, growing up, they watched game shows together on a TV they found on the street.
Meanwhile, we don’t know their names, or the country of their family’s origin, or where they grew up. Or even when.
Never mind, we don’t need to know. With exquisite detail, Shayan Lotfi stitches a rich and colorful tapestry of the life of a sister and a brother—one of the most moving I’ve ever seen. Her radiantly written new play, What Became of Us, is now being performed at the Atlantic Stage 2 by two different casts, to illustrate the universality of its primary themes: namely, the immigrant experience and the meaning of family.
What Became of Us, narrated first by the sister and then joined by the brother, takes us through the decades of their lives. She was born in “The Old Country” (in the “Global South,” according to the program). “The images of my remembered life,” she calls her narrative, a leitmotif that he later echoes. She paints a vivid portrait of the “extreme ordinariness” of their parents, working “honest jobs” at the post office and pharmacy in “the Old Country,” then emigrating to “this Country” and beginning their new life in a bedsit next to a bus depot in an unnamed city, with a view of a deodorant sign out of the window. The parents start a business selling snacks in the street—then eventually run their own store. “They found this country remarkable,” she narrates, “but they still longed for something they could not describe.”
Sound familiar? This could be the backstory of any immigrant family coming to America. And that’s how Shayan Lotfi, the playwright, intends it.
When she turned seven, he was born, and thereafter joins their narrative of ritual remembering. Facing outward to the audience, they continue through the shared years of their lives. How he once hurt his shoulder and she called an ambulance, he remembers. How their parents took them camping and he hated it, she remembers. She mentions his stuffed dragon and parrot; he mentions her attempts to play Brahms on the clarinet. In adolescence, she reminds him how he smoked pot with their uncle. He reminds her how once, when she was minding the store, it was robbed; rather than upset their parents with the news, she replaced the stolen cash with her own meager savings.
Moments that revealed the difficulty of life as an immigrant go by almost unnoticed, un-emphasized, but they are there. She remembers how they came home one night to find their windows smashed, “our father lying to you that it was simply random,” she reminds her brother.
As they emerge into early adulthood, he becomes a rebel; she, a loner and an ever-dutiful daughter. He reminds her how she was admitted to a “fancy” college with a scholarship, but her parents didn’t want her to leave home, so she attended a community college instead and worked at the store on weekends. He drinks, and fails his driver’s test; she loses her virginity to a teacher. He goes to culinary school and takes out loans on credit cards. He explores his gender identity (his parents were shocked); she gets a job at a library and is promoted to manager. He starts a bistro, meets and marries a woman.
Then their parents die in a car crash, leaving almost all their money to her. They fight, and an estrangement ensues. She returns to “The Old Country” –to search for the burgundy doorknob she always remembered on the front door of their old home. He has a son (“Golden Child”) and immerses himself in his upbringing. Six years pass, and they are reconciled.
How I wish I could continue to quote you all my favorite details from their remembered past—there are so many, so specific, and so richly rendered! But I’ve already included more than I should in the space of this review. So permit me to fast-forward through to the final chapter of their lives. He pays off his mortgage; he expands his bistro to include a bakery. She finds joy in her new identity as an aunt, taking “Golden Child” to the museum. He celebrates his 30th wedding anniversary and sends his son to the “fancy” university she didn’t attend. She runs for the local council and retires to a cottage by the sea that he renovates. He sells the bistro and encourages her to write. They reminisce about their parents—whom, it turns out, neither of them liked very much. She falls ill and undergoes surgery in a hospital. He is alone now, remembering her.
Under Jennifer Chang’s restrained direction, this glowing production—with a barebones set by Tanya Orellana—allows Rosalind Chao and BD Wong to shine in their roles. Their love for one another and for their shared life is palpable. No doubt Shohreh Aghdashloo and Tony Shalhoub, who succeed them in performance, will shine in the same way. After all, this is a universal story.
God is in the details, as the saying goes. No one can write such rich details of a “remembered life” unless they lived it themselves. They are so specific, so full, that the playwright must have experienced them. After all, “this a memory play,” as another brother says of the life he shared with his sister (in Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie, of course). Such is the authenticity and radiance of Shayan Lotfi’s elegant new duet.
What Became of Us. Through June 29 at the Atlantic Theater Company’s Stage 2 (330 West 16th Street, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues). www.atlantictheater.org
Photos: Ahron R. Foster