Playwright: Jay Paul Deratany
At: Athenaeum Studio 1, 2936 N. Southport
Phone: 773-935-6860; $18-$20
Runs through: Dec. 7
Haram Iran is earnest and urgent rather than good—a call to action performed for those who probably agree with its perspectives but are powerless to answer its demand for justice. It's based on the Iranian execution in 2005 of two adolescent boys for homosexual acts. Only 15 when arrested, the boys were tried under sharia law and possibly were victims both of false witness and trumped-up charges. The case was widely reported online and in the LGBT press, accompanied by graphic photos of the public hangings.
Playwright, attorney and human-rights advocate Jay Paul Deratany researched the case extensively and uses real names and facts whenever possible. However, he speculates on the personalities of the boys themselves and on the motives and tactics ( possibly brutal ) of their accusers and judges, although it's apparent the case was intended to enforce morality as interpreted by the mullahs. Act I introduces the boys and explores their growing attraction to each other, while Act II details the ordeal of their arrest, humiliation, kangaroo-court trial and deaths.
Deratany draws Ayaz Marhoni as an imaginative student/bookworm assigned to tutor unimaginative soccer jock Mahmoud Asgari. Ayaz exposes Mahmoud to English books and magazines with Catcher in the Rye as their guilty pleasure. They find in adolescent Holden Caulfield surprising parallels to themselves. As Deratany writes it, they don't have sex together—they don't even kiss—although they certainly know they are flirting with that which is 'haram': forbidden.
Deratany's attitude toward the boys, and Ayaz's highly educated mother, is deeply caring, although his opposites-attract character strategy is clichéd, and the solemnity of Act I makes it slow and heavy—almost ponderous. This gives way to Act II excesses—perhaps true—with a screaming judge, the boys in a cage ( dog fetishists will love it ) and bits reminiscent of Midnight Express ( jail rape ) and Kiss of the Spider Woman. Yes, the brutality and injustice are outrages, but one also is aware that Haram Iran lacks subtlety or complexity. Importantly, it is not an anti-Islamic work, although the prayers of Ayaz's mother pointedly go unanswered.
Haram Iran director David Zak largely ( and aptly ) has utilized actors of Middle Eastern and South Asian heritage, still far from the norm in Chicago. Anand Bhatia ( Mahmoud ) and Matios Simonian ( Ayaz ) are tender friends who develop their growing spiritual bond well, albeit incredibly naively, as sketched by Deratany. All other players are capable, but have one-dimensional roles. Disconcertingly, everyone uses an accent as if they weren't speaking their native language ( Farsi ) to each other; it only makes for stilted dialogue. Roger Wykes' scenery of tiled floor; colorful but plain walls; and practical but simple wooden furniture summons up hotel rooms of my memory in Morocco and Egypt.