"Table for One"
Sakina’s Restaurant is
a one-man, multiple-character, mostly comic play whose most original feature
is that it’s about Indian Muslim immigrants to America. It originally was
produced Off Broadway in 1998 and now being revived by its Bombay-born, British-American
author and star, Aasif
Mandvi. In the years since its premiere, much has happened to Mandvi and his
fellow Muslims. On the positive side would be his gaining national prominence as a correspondent on
“The Daily Show with Jon Stewart”; on the negative, the anti-Muslim biases awakened by 9/11.
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| Aasif Mandvi. Photo: Lisa Berg. |
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| Aasif Mandvi. Photo: Lisa Berg. |
After he mounts the stage to finishes his goodbyes, which involves
receiving a small stone as a farewell gift, the show curtain—depicting an
airmail envelope covered in Gujarati script—whisks away and we’re in a realistic
Indian restaurant (designed by Wilson Chin), adorned with Christmas lights (Mary
Louise Geiger did the lighting), where Agzi is busily employed as a waiter.
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| Aasif Mandvi. Photo: Lisa Berg. |
Before long, he begins introducing five other characters,
using costume pieces (courtesy of designer Jen Caprio) taken from a hat rack, spectacles,
or other simple devices to help characterize each one. We hear only their half
of the conversations, but it’s always clear what the other person is saying.
Over the course of the play’s essentially plotless 80
minutes, we get not only the conventional examples of culture shock so many immigrants
have experienced but also insights into the aspirations and disappointments of
the family for which Agzi works. Every now and then, Agzi returns to offer an
elusive parable somehow related to his experiences. That stone his mother gave
him, of course, will reveal its symbolism before the play concludes.
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| Aasif Mandvi. Photo: Lisa Berg. |
As he alters his voice, gestures, and expressions, Mandvi first introduces us to Faridda, slaving in the kitchen with her rolling pin as she
fends off Hakim’s attempts at “hanky panky” and regrets abandoning her hopes to
become a classical Indian dancer. Then we get to know Hakim, struggling to keep his business
going while arguing with his teenage daughter, Sakina, about her having become
so Americanized she neglects her heritage.
Sakina is suffering from the conflict between her
interest in an American boyfriend and the Indian man to whom her parents prearranged
her betrothal. Her fiancé, Ali, driven by his sexual needs to seek a prostitute, is unable to prevent his religious inclinations from commingling with his hormonal
ones, And Samir, Sakina’s spoiled younger brother, selfish about his Game Boy, resents everything about India when his family goes there for his grandma’s
funeral;
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| Aasif Mandvi. Photo: Lisa Berg. |
While some moments are deeply emotional, Mandvi’s performance
is largely comedic, often broadly so. The audience greeted much of it with
laughter when I attended. I, though, felt more like the stone in Agzi’s pocket. Culture
clashes can make for fine comedy, as so many plays and movies have demonstrated,
but Sakina’s Restaurant too often seems
clichéd, offering little we haven’t seen or heard in recent years, including in Indian contexts
(The Big Sick comes to
mind). Thus we have the familiar parental fear that their kids will betray
their heritage (remember The Jazz Singer?)
for the American way, or that America actually may not be the shining city on
the hill longed for by people in hardscrabble countries.
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| Aasif Mandvi. Photo: Lisa Berg. |
At one point, Agzi tries to convince a customer that, using
the restaurant’s rating scale of 1-5, the dish he’s ordered as a 5 would be too
spicy and should be a 2. “I’m trying to save your life, sir” he insists in one of his best lines. I can’t
say how the Zagat Survey would rate Sakina’s
Restaurant. But if we're talking about a 1-5 scale measuring theatrical taste, I'd give the play a 2 3/4.
OTHER VIEWPOINTS:
Minetta Lane Theatre
18 Minetta Lane, NYC
Through November 11