Review: One/Un (SummerWorks)

(photo credit: Production Lombric)

A Iranian-French-Québécois-Canadian’s story
by Zoë Erwin-Longstaff

We confront an audience, actually an absent audience, but all the chairs are there. Soon actor/creator Mani Soleymanlou takes a seat and begins to address us, the non-absent audience, as well as the tech crew directly.  He barks orders at the guy who keeps “fucking up the lights,” and casually tells us not to worry about our cellphones.  It’s a little hokey, but it gets the point across.  We the audience are implicated in his struggle to create a narrative out of a chaotic Iranian-French-Québécois-Canadian’s story. 

Soleymanlou draws us in as he charts his childhood odyssey.  As he switches fluidly from English to French to Farsi, the anecdotes tumble out.  With superb comedic timing, he riffs on everything from learning how to use a Parisian urinal to a potted history of Iran since the Shah, to the ghastly sacrifices of dignity and independence that are the hallmark of today’s Iran under the theocracy.  The creator is especially haunted by his mother’s transition from Western carelessness to self-entombed victim, as the family returns for a visit to the homeland.   The highlight comes in a particularly animated turn on food preparation and consumption among Iranians. In fact, food is the key to Iranian cultural survival he suggests.  The show lags a little in its account of everyday life and protest activities under the current regime.  But, the personal dimensions of Soleymanlou’s quest for coherence are always compelling.  

One/un is at SummerWorks