PicksInSix Review: Andy Warhol In Iran - Northlight Theatre
Northlight’s ‘Warhol’ “Brings Home The Bacon!”
PicksInSix® Review | Ed Tracy
Iran in the 70s – a fight for political, moral and individual rights that led to targeted suppression of protests by a regime that wielded torture and fear as the rule of law. Fast forward nearly fifty years and women’s rights now take center stage in regional protests. Radical change in our time is both momentary and glacial. A single act of violence broadcast on social media ignites instantaneous worldwide condemnation, while the exhaustive search for truth and justice that follows moves at an exhaustingly slow pace.
Throughout the life and times of Andy Warhol from the late 40s until his death in 1987 at 58, every encounter was a rich story worthy of being told. If you experienced the work of the iconic pop creator/activist/artist/filmmaker firsthand, the repetition of Warhol’s single images were unavoidably captivating. Shades of Marilyn Monroe, Richard Nixon, and Campbell’s Soup. Films that captured the personal stories of his subjects, or nothing at all, always inquisitive, searching for the essence that makes each subject unique. In the telling, Warhol built a worldwide following, amassed wealth, influence, access and fame with a single superpower: his ability to observe.
Warhol’s adept skill and fascination with his subject’s uniqueness, that also nearly took his life, is a central theme of Northlight Theatre’s absorbing production of Brent Askari’s “Andy Warhol in Iran,” directed by Northlight’s Artistic Director BJ Jones. The byproduct of this fascinating piece is a broader understanding of who Warhol was as a person, told through monologues highlighted with fast-moving images that frame the fictional confrontation between Warhol, masterfully interpreted in a brilliant performance by Rob Lindley, and a young radical named Farhad, played superbly by Hamid Dehghami.
It is difficult to determine when the razor-sharp dialogue of Askari’s writing ends and the pinpoint pacing of Lindley’s seamless delivery begins. Given the show’s premise of a politically-motivated celebrity kidnapping, one might not imagine that the storyline would be deliciously layered with so many hilarious Warhol-esqe observations. To Lindley’s credit, he both feeds off of and into Dehghami’s frenetic obsession to further his group’s cause by way of Warhol’s fame. The cause of Farhad’s pain at the hands of Iran’s torturous and oppressive regime is very real. Askari’s script exploits Warhol’s astute and inquisitive nature to disarm his potential captor and Lindley skillfully knocks it out of the park. The result is a free-flowing narrative of discovery that, along the way, retells Warhol’s early years in Pittsburgh, tumultuous relationships, a near-death experience that altered his life forever and his personal view on a range of topics from capitalism to life and death. On the former, it’s like he always says: “You gotta bring home the bacon!” To the latter, he muses: “Dying is not hard; it’s the waking up part.”
Dehghami, an accomplished Iranian actor and recent MFA graduate of Northwestern University, evokes a generation of college students caught up in the political turmoil of the era that would lead to their expulsion from academic communities across the United States. That brief, but powerful, intersection with western culture, was the single act for that generation, prompting life-alerting choices of family and freedom for countless Iranians who oppose tyranny.
Set in a suite at the Royal Tehran Hilton smartly designed by Todd Rosenthal, the room serves as an oasis of the decadence of the period where Warhol discovers perhaps for the first time what the world view of his work truly means to those who exploit it for their own means. Mike Tutaj’s riveting historical projections are enhanced by the collaborative sound design of Andre Pluess and Forrest Gregor. But it is Lindley’s crisp, clever and measured approach that pours out and will ignite the inevitable conversation about Warhol’s vast complexity.
PHOTO|Michael Brosilow
through February 19, 2023
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