Theatre in Review: Meet the Cartozians (Second Stage/Pershing Square Signature Center) The rising young playwright Talene Monahon may be having her breakthrough moment with Meet the Cartozians, a then-and-now comedy about identity, history, and the price of assimilation that calls to mind (and stacks up well against) Bruce Norris' Clybourne Park and (to a lesser extent) Lynn Nottage's By the Way, Meet Vera Stark. Using an actual historical incident as her starting point, Monahon spins a century-spanning tale that poses complex questions about identity and the meaning of citizenship. It couldn't be more of this fraught American moment. We begin in Portland, Oregon, in 1923, where the Cartozian family, Armenian immigrants, have settled and prospered thanks to a burgeoning rug business. Everything should be fine, but Tatos, the naturalized patriarch, is faced with the legal cancellation of his citizenship on the grounds that he is insufficiently white. (This is a real-life incident, fictionalized by Monahon, which evokes the temper of an era marked by the first Red Scare, the Palmer Raids, and other expressions of xenophobia.) Into this unhappy situation, the playwright introduces Wallace McCamant, an Irish-American lawyer who is convinced he can get Tatos' status restored. The gentlemanly, unconsciously patronizing McCamant argues to Tato and his family that "the law has never been about what's fair. It's about which side tells the better story." And so, he adds, "The story we will tell is that, in fact, there is nothing more white than being Armenian." This is more than a little baffling to the Cartozians, who have never thought of themselves as anything but white. Their discomfort becomes more obvious when McCamant announces he has rounded up a group of East Coast Armenians who are "quality folks," adding, "There's one woman, a beautiful woman, with the lightest blue eyes you've ever seen." Even more disturbingly, Vahan, Tatos' son, is urged not to attend the court proceedings because his looks are too dark. A discussion about the Armenian tradition of celebrating Christmas on January 6 spins into new levels of absurdity, as McCamant obsesses about it: Is it American enough? Is it Christian enough? Little wonder that Hazel, Tatos' daughter, runs aground when coaching her father on his testimony. "Do you own your own home?" she asks. "Yes," he replies. "Where is that home?" she queries. A pregnant silence ensues; where indeed? Act II shifts to Glendale, California, home to a lively Armenian American community. It is 2024, and a certain Cartozian descendant, who may be the most famous woman in the world (no prizes for guessing her real-life model), is taping an episode for her reality series. Of course, it's July, and her crew has commandeered the living room of Leslie, a poet and essayist, erecting an enormous Christmas tree and rounding up a gang of local politicians and academics, who are persuaded to don colorful ethnic costumes and dole out bits of information about Armenian traditions and cuisine. But, as time passes and Ms. Cartozian fails to appear, everyone falls into a contentious conversation that includes a side trip into acronym hell: Does being Armenian put one in the MENA (Middle Eastern-North African) category? Or is it more inclusive to use the term MENASA, which, Leslie notes, is "MENA, but with the South Asian countries included." Nardek, a history professor, argues that "Middle Eastern" is an inherently colonial term, preferring to use SWANA, for "SouthWest Asian and North African." Add an "S," Nardek notes, and SSWANA includes South Asian countries. "Wouldn't it be easier if it were SWANASA?" wonders Robert, a city council member. "Am I the only one who sees that this is all gibberish?" asks Rose, who runs the local historical society. Such hairsplitting deeply distresses Rose, who sees the Cartozian episode as a golden opportunity to promote "all the wonderful parts of Armenian culture," including "Armenian art, Armenian dance. Armenian food. Genocide awareness!" Her remarks trigger an argument that is the mirror image of Act I, about the imposition of white identity on Armenians. Rose is appalled -- of course, they're white, she insists, but Nardak replies, "I'm not white at the airport," adding that, ironically, he was denied tenure because "they didn't want to give [it] to another white man." Leslie chimes in, adding, "One of my genocide poems was rejected from a POC poetry festival because I 'didn't qualify'." Throwing fuel on the fire, Alan, the production guy, starts talking about his "Black Irish" heritage, causing a near riot among the others. Meet the Cartozians is the nimblest of balancing acts, juxtaposing the family's poignant plight in Act I with the farcical events of Act II; Monahon has plenty to say about racial and ethnic definitions, and how their meanings shift depending on who is making them. Equally mordant is her vision of a family's intersection with a moment in history, a legacy that vanishes into a thoroughly manufactured reality devoured by video cameras. As Robert asks, what can we really know about Tatos, who has been reduced to a footnote of history? And of Tatos' uber-famous descendant, Robert adds, "Historians of the future will have thousands of hours of footage of this woman! Her whole life on camera, almost. But that doesn't mean that, a century in the future, they'll be able to understand who she was. Just because you have a record of something, it's not necessarily reality, right?" Under David Cromer's pinpoint direction, the discussion scintillates, especially as put forth by this accomplished cast. Nael Nacer is touching as Tatos, confused and a tad embittered by his shifting status, and as the gentle Robert, who is both the voice of reason and a closet Cartozian fan. Raffi Barsoumian is impressive as the impulsive, furious Vahan, totally transforming himself into the urbane, argumentative Nardek. Susan Pourfar injects a note of lucidity into everything Leslie says, including an appalling account of her family's losses in the genocide ("Twenty-eight of my relatives were murdered. Many of whom were only children at the time. They were beheaded, shot in their backyards, left in ditches to die. Thousands died of starvation on the death march through the Syrian desert.") Tamara Sevunts is a model diplomat as Hazel, Tatos' daughter, who acts as translator between her family and McCamant, while fending off his advances. Both Pourfar and Sevunts make brief, strategic appearances as other characters, about which I will say nothing except that each makes a big impression. Will Brill pulls off a brilliant double act as McCamant, who can't help disturbing his clients, especially when introducing a bottle of whisky into their Christmas celebration -- it is Prohibition, after all -- and as airheaded Alan, struggling to make the argument that he, too, is a victim of history. Even more brilliant is Andrea Martin, first as Markrid, the Portland Cartozians' matriarch, issuing oracular pronouncements in her halting English (including a dire coffee-grounds reading), and as Rose, who is horrified at her neighbors' newfangled ideas about identity. To see her land a laugh with a perfectly mundane line (To Alan: "Young man, you're doing excellent work") is to see a master at work. Scenic designer Tatiana Kahvegian delivers both an evocatively in-period living room (sensitively, gorgeously lit by Stacey Derosier) circa 1923, and Leslie's home, its furnishings blocked out by lighting equipment, bounce boards, and that towering tree. Enver Chakartash's costumes are true to each century; the 1920s wear is beautifully detailed, as are the traditional Armenian outfits. Lee Kinney's sound design includes a quiet, unsettling rumble that might be history asserting itself. "There must be something Armenian that is eternal -- something that endures and stays constant and essential," Robert says. But pinning that down proves highly elusive. It's a dilemma that will resonate with many in the audience, and, in its acuity, it announces Monahon as a major new voice. --David Barbour 
|
