'Elyria' review: The past catches up to them, outside Cleveland
The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Friday, November 22, 2024


'Elyria' review: The past catches up to them, outside Cleveland
Gulshan Mia, left, and Nilanjana Bose in “Elyria” at the Linda Gross Theater in New York, Feb. 9, 2023. A microcosmic tale of the Indian diaspora, Deepa Purohit’s new play looks at the history of two women and the man between them, the New York Times critic Laura Collins-Hughes writes. (Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)

by Laura Collins-Hughes



NEW YORK, NY.- Watching an actor steal a show is one of the absolute thrills of live performance — but the purest method of that thievery has nothing to do with scenery-chewing, grand solo moments or sparkly razzmatazz. It’s nimble and cat-burglar quiet, not demanding attention, not meaning to upstage.

As a doctor named Charu in Deepa Purohit’s new play “Elyria,” set in 1982 Ohio, Bhavesh Patel has the element of surprise very much in his favor. Charu is a mild, conformist, ordinary man — and in his muted earth tones, outfitted for obscurity. In his first scene, he arrives home from the hospital, pours himself a bowl of cornflakes, takes the last of the milk, has an unremarkable conversation with his homemaker wife. He’s a remote presence, lost in his own thoughts. Yet every beat and pulse of him has, for the audience, a subdued magnetism.

It’s a genuinely exciting performance, layered and full, flecked with the driest comedy. The only trouble with such standout excellence is that it shifts the axis of the play, so that it seems as if Charu is at its center. “Elyria” in fact revolves around two women and their tangled history with each other, though they both also have a history with him: Dhatta (Gulshan Mia), who married Charu two decades ago, back in Tanzania, as their families had arranged; and Vasanta (Nilanjana Bose), who fell in love with him when they were young and had his baby, though he never knew.

The sprawling “Elyria” is a microcosmic tale of the Indian diaspora, crisscrossing continents from Africa to Europe and North America. Directed by Awoye Timpo for Atlantic Theater Company, the play finds Dhatta and Vasanta in Elyria, Ohio, not far from Cleveland.

Dhatta and Charu have lived there since 1969, parents to a college-age son, Rohan (Mohit Gautam), who is all-American in his preppy rugby shirts. Vasanta, who works in a hair salon at J.C. Penney, and her husband, Shiv (Sanjit De Silva), a would-be entrepreneur, are newly arrived after 20 years in Nairobi.

“Not many of us East Africans here in these parts, no?” Shiv says when the two couples run into each other at the movies.

Shiv, though, is the only one of them who has no idea that this is a fraught reunion, let alone that Vasanta’s presence in town feels to Dhatta like a betrayal and a threat, even a trauma.

For almost all of Act 1, the audience is left in the dark, too, about what is going on between the women, which makes the first half of the play feel in retrospect like prolonged throat-clearing.




A spoiler, then, because there’s no discussing “Elyria” without it: Rohan, Dhatta and Charu’s son, is Vasanta and Charu’s biological child. Both women have always known it. Once the audience does, too, the many threads of the play begin to form a more taut, less enigmatic tapestry.

But there are so many threads, and Purohit, attentive to her characters, wants to follow them all: the two marriages, the parent-child relationships, and Rohan’s charming, might-it-be-romance friendship with Hassanali (Omar Shafiuzzaman), a British exchange student. Memory sequences are also woven through, involving Vasanta and Dhatta’s younger selves, and there’s some lovely Indian dance. (Choreography is by Parijat Desai.)

The muchness dilutes rather than intensifies. There isn’t time to give the history between the women the weight and tension that it needs if the audience is to invest in it.

Jason Ardizzone-West’s geometric set, though, is a thing of spare beauty, the square stage (not raised, as it usually is, in the Linda Gross Theater) surrounded by the audience on all sides and elegantly lit by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew. The costumes, by Sarita Fellows, have some fun with 1980s fashion, despite a few misses, like Rohan’s jeans, which aren’t Levi’s but should be, and the way women wore leggings then versus now.

But Patel’s Charu is perfect — even his too-long sideburns, a relic of the ’70s: as if the nation had slipped from the Me Decade into the Reagan era while he was distracted at work. Charu is comic and reckless, selfish and decent, myopic and real. It’s an exhilarating performance, a work of actorly alchemy.



‘Elyria’

Through March 19 at the Linda Gross Theater, Manhattan; atlantictheater.org. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.










Today's News

March 1, 2023

Lark Mason Associates announces an epic triple-header of auction sales during Asia Week New York

The quality of content at ARCOmadrid 2023 seduces collectors and professionals

Sotheby's to present 'The World of Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman'

Almine Rech Paris opens Ha Chong-Hyun's fourth solo exhibition with the gallery

National Museum of Women in the Arts to reopen October 21, 2023, after transformative renovation

Olafur Eliasson and Robert Macfarlane selected for major landmark artwork for Cumbrian coast

Mississippi Museum of Art announces acquisition of major collection of quilts from Kohler Foundation

Unrecorded Anglo-Chinese treasure comes to auction

Red 1951 Ford Convertible and 1940s Ford Monarch dealer sign to headline Miller & Miller's upcoming auction

Public Art Fund opens Ethiopian photographer Aïda Muluneh's international, multi-city exhibition

Compass once owned by Daniel Boone navigates to top of $1.46 million at Heritage Auctions

Howard Finster's rarely seen early wood creations now shown at Paradise Garden

Paintings of Titanic disaster site, Mark Twain's typewriter headline Heritage auction

First private contemporary art foundation in Madagascar to open in April

"Charles Arnoldi: Deep Cuts" now on view at Praz-Delavallade in Los Angeles

Dieter Durinck's exhibition "Bootleg Paintings" now on view at Kunsthal Gent

Noonans to sell the medals of one of the highest scoring British aces of the Great War who wanted to fight another day

Harry Philbrick to lead The Fabric Workshop and Museum as Interim Executive Director

University Archives announces Rare Manuscripts, Books & Sports Memorabilia sale

'Elyria' review: The past catches up to them, outside Cleveland

Review: In Hansberry's prescient 'sign,' the sin of apathy

Review: A blunt new 'Lohengrin' at the Met stars a shining knight

Cancel Timeshare with Timeshare Freedom Group

The benefit of getting married in Malibu CA.

The Benefits of Art Education: Exploring the Impact of Art on Student Learning

The Best Art That Can be Found in Casinos Around the World

Exploring the World of New Online Casinos in Japan




Museums, Exhibits, Artists, Milestones, Digital Art, Architecture, Photography,
Photographers, Special Photos, Special Reports, Featured Stories, Auctions, Art Fairs,
Anecdotes, Art Quiz, Education, Mythology, 3D Images, Last Week, .

 



Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez
Writer: Ofelia Zurbia Betancourt

Attorneys
Truck Accident Attorneys
Accident Attorneys
Holistic Dentist
Abogado de accidentes
สล็อต
สล็อตเว็บตรง

Royalville Communications, Inc
produces:

ignaciovillarreal.org juncodelavega.com facundocabral-elfinal.org
Founder's Site. Hommage
to a Mexican poet.
Hommage
       

The First Art Newspaper on the Net. The Best Versions Of Ave Maria Song Junco de la Vega Site Ignacio Villarreal Site Parroquia Natividad del Señor
Tell a Friend
Dear User, please complete the form below in order to recommend the Artdaily newsletter to someone you know.
Please complete all fields marked *.
Sending Mail
Sending Successful