As COVID-era productions go, This Is Who I Am couldn’t be more pandemic-appropriate. Not only is Amir Nizar Zuabi’s play performed live in a Zoom room, it’s about a Zoom room—the one shared by an unnamed, widowed Palestinian father (Ramsey Faragallah) and U.S.-based son (Yousof Sultani) whose separation is defined more by past hurts than thousands of miles.
Each in his own kitchen and in real time (just over an hour), they will by mutual arrangement prepare fteer, a spinach and onion-stuffed dumpling. This so-called “peasant dish” was the late matriarch’s specialty, and her surviving men are here to test the proposition that baking and breaking bread possess the power to heal.
As it happens, the issues separating them have little to do with their being Palestinian per se and everything to do with being relatives, which is simply to say that there’s a universality here with which anyone can identify. The father can’t get his head around the son’s not having been there in his mother’s long last days. Over only two visits, the dad bitterly recalls, “You didn’t even unpack your suitcase.” Why the self-imposed exile?
For his part, the son’s chosen calling is art curator, and he’s resistant to returning to a land where there are “no museums, no beauty.” There’s also lingering resentment over his father’s attitudes about manhood, back when the kid was growing up and bullied.
All of the above questions and more are eventually answered, though the author’s hand is all too visible in the process. Details are squeezed out and defenses peeled like the lemons and onions prepared for the meal, dribs and drabs of revelation that seem externally determined rather than organic to the action. When the father’s challenge prompts a violent “I don’t want to talk about that!,” you know that’s playwright code for “They will talk about it, but after some time has passed.” The Zoom call eventually admits alternating monologues while the yeast rises or the patties bake: heartfelt poetic arias somewhat at odds with the naturalistic feel of the rest. The dialogue is pretty much on-the-nose throughout; infusions of subtext would help the work going forward.
If the structuring is perfunctory, the execution by director Evren Odcikin and his cast is anything but. Faragallah is a convincing lion in winter whose natural strength and confidence have been laid low by time and personal loss. Sultani carries the character’s sophistication effortlessly, allowing us to readily picture him as the lonely, frightened child from the old country. Each pitches his performance to a realistic level, such that one can forget they’re actors in performance and share their pain when the emotional floodgates burst open. As far as the cooking demo is concerned, their detailed business is admirably, often amusingly handled, as in their contrasting preparation styles, the son precisely measuring everything while the dad tosses in ingredients by sight as if in imitation of his late wife.
This Is Who I Am is a cooperative venture among five, count ’em, five companies: PlayCo (NYC), Woolly Mammoth (DC), A.R.T. (Cambridge), the Guthrie (Minneapolis), and Oregon Shakespeare (Ashland). Each and all are to be commended for their can-do group spirit in bringing us this flawed but heartfelt and touching, live-before-our-eyes work. And the fteer sure did look tasty. Each of the companies has struck up partnerships with local Middle Eastern eateries; purveyors of food surely deserve our support whether or not they’re working out personal baggage along the way.
This Is Who I Am opened December 13, 2020 and will be streamed through January 3, 2021. Information and reservations: woollymammoth.net
