My overall impression
RICHARD ADAMS, The World Socialist Website
With only a single chair that looked as if it had just been hauled from storage, no props, and no costume changes, Zahra Noorbakhsh conjures four wildly different characters – well, three, since Zahra herself is the central figure in this story of a 25 year old Iranian-American grad student (working on her MFA) who impulsively asks her “very, very white, atheist” boyfriend of four years to move into her studio apartment. She wasn’t quite prepared for him to say yes and she’s not at all prepared to deal with her traditional-minded Iranian-émigré father and traditional but surprisingly feisty Iranian mother.
Duncan, the boyfriend, who’s been working at UPS after getting his UC Berkeley degree in English Lit is stereotypically commitment phobic, reacting to even the slightest reference to marriage with what Zahra demonstrates as “marriage eyes,” i.e., pupil-popping pole-axed silence. But the greater hurdle to Zahra’s peace of mind is University of Michigan-educated Papa Noorbakhsh who’s got very traditional ideas about men and women conjugating before marriage. According to Papa, whose English is peppered with “man” without regard to gender, such arrangements are forbidden by “the Islam.”
But Papa finally discovers a compromise guaranteed to make everyone happy: through a curious interpretation of a particularly vague passage from Quran, he decides that the answer is a “pre-engagement” exchange of vows, a simple ceremony to be followed by a celebratory meal of roasted lamb. Duncan loves Mama’s lamb, but Duncan hates all religion. He is what Zahra describes as a “Bill Maher atheist.”
But with cross-cultural catastrophe looming, Papa saves the day with yet another even more curious bit of theological exegesis: since Islam simply means submission to a power greater than oneself, and since Duncan believes in (i.e., submits to) the laws of gravity, Duncan is, ipso facto, a Muslim. Hence the title of this delightful hour-long romp through Zahra’s love life.
Ms. Noorbakhsh’s writing is stellar, her acting impulses genuine and emotionally grounded. She employs an economy of gesture to distinguish her characters, but vocally, as a performer, she never quite rises to the quality of her material. There were moments, early on, when this made it difficult to separate characters in rapid conversation, though the problem disappeared as we became more familiar with the characters’ physical signatures.
“All Atheists are Muslim” is especially relevant in a place like Los Angeles where diversity reigns and émigré enclaves scramble to maintain the cultural traditions of their homelands in the face of the ever-shifting improvisational mores of California life. At a time when what used to be called “mixed” marriages seem to be becoming the norm, this well-told story is a reminder that this “multi-cultural” society is still very much a mixing bowl and not yet a well-blended smoothie.
