The Veil Reviews
"Remarkable Roots"
November 4, 2007
The Chronicle Herald
By Elissa Barnard Arts Reporter/Theatre Review
Marty Burt, Valerie Buhagiar and Nadiya Chettiar star in OneLight Theatre’s production of The Veil, at Neptune’s Studio Theatre until Nov. 18. For the historical play, Shahin Sayadi has adapted the bestselling Iranian novel Khanoom, a 600-page book in Farsi. (Tim Krochak / Staff)
The Veil is a sweeping, epic drama that flows as fluidly and rapidly as a good movie.
Based on Iranian historical fiction, Shahin Sayadi’s play takes one to another time and place. It holds its audience in the grip of a different culture and the strong voice of its women. Even Neptune’s Studio Theatre looks entirely different with plush Persian carpets on the lobby walls and floors.
The set, of dropping bolts of white fabric that serve as a screen for projections and also become mundane things like blankets and doorways is unconventional; the mix of Eastern and European music transporting, the visuals metaphorically powerful.
Yet the heart of The Veil is its riveting story of one woman’s remarkable life amid the tumult of the 20th century in both Iran and Europe.
To get this story, Sayadi, the Iranian-born director of Halifax’s OneLight Theatre, has translated and adapted the Iranian bestseller Khanoom, a 600-page book in Farsi by exiled Iranian journalist Masoud Behnoud.
Sayadi is blessed with two fine actors to tell the story: Valerie Buhagiar as the old Khanoom, creating a rich and vivid character in this grandmother, and Nadiya Chettiar as the granddaughter, Nanaz, who also plays the young Khanoom.
Chettiar can immediately breathe the emotion into a moment no matter how small. Whether she is nine and precocious, sick and pale, giddy and girlish or desperate and pleading, Chettiar’s Khanoom has a forceful presence and a clear, absorbing character.
That’s necessary since The Veil whips along quickly through many short scenes.
It starts with the old Khanoom living in a basement bunker during the Iran/Iraq war with her 18-year-old granddaughter. Nanaz is upset that her mother is in jail and that she isn’t back home in L.A. being a teenager.
Then her grandmother tells her her life story to demonstrate why she is so rooted in Iran.
Khanoom’s tale goes back to a colourful harem in Iran in 1906 with a beloved and witty eunuch (Marty Burt), who cures illness by warding off the evil eye.
Also beloved is the rebellious Armenian aunt Nezhat, beautifully played by Genevieve Steele. Nezhat dangerously supports the new Iranian constitution and urges Khanoom’s mother (Lara Arabian) to leave her abusive husband.
The new shah and Khanoom’s father are both ugly, dangerous men. (Pasha Ebrahimi gets to play all the rotten men in this play and does so with latent violence and relish in his cold cruelty.)
Sent away to Russia by her mother when she is nine, Khanoom ends up in Paris and experiences two marriages and two wars.
Projected visual images take the audience immediately to Paris and Berlin, inside mosques and fancy houses, to the streets of a vanquished Germany and to the mountains of Iran.
This dense and epic story is clear. Sayadi has kept Khanoom’s voice dominant in a play that is so rich in design it almost suffers from an embarrassment of riches.
The key design motif is the cloth in white lengths with weighted bottoms. Cast members endlessly move the sheets to create different types of sets, props and situations.
In a play about a woman’s difficult choices based on family, love and emotion the cloth easily connects one to the world of women. Women spend their lives folding laundry, tucking in children, straightening carpets and, in this Eastern world, wrapping themselves in cloth.
As metaphorically strong and visually magical as this technique is, the endless resetting of the cloths can be distracting.
D’Arcy Morris-Poultney’s sensuous costumes, a labour of deep thought and detail, ground this play in its different places and times.
The strong sense of reality is threatened by an occasional use of puppets and particularly by a puppet doll with a giant, blank, white head that represents a little girl.
Most of the massive technical elements, including Michael Mader’s brilliant, comprehensive lighting and Brian Buckle’s evocative sound design, are interwoven invisibly to create this wonderful other world, as any good novel does.
The Veil, directed by Sayadi with a strong ensemble cast and a keen eye for visual imagery, is, so far, one of the best shows this fall for its thorough development and artistry. OneLight creates something completely different without losing the joy in a good story.
The play runs to Nov. 18 as a OneLight Theatre production presented in association with Neptune Theatre and Mermaid Theatre of Nova Scotia.
Tickets are $15 to $35 at Neptune’s box office. Show times are Tuesday to Friday, 8 p.m., Saturday 4 and 8:30 p.m. and Sunday 2 and 7:30 p.m.
"The Veil"
November 1, 2007
The Coast
By Kate Watson
The Veil is visually stunning and totally engrossing. It is as intricately woven as the fine carpets that adorn the foyer at the Neptune Studio.
It is a story that spans 85 years in the turbulent life of Khanoom, a Persian princess who escapes the palace harem and experiences much of the political and social upheaval of the 20th century.
Khanoom, the grandmother and story teller, is brought fully to life by Valerie Buhagiar, while the young Khanoom and Khanoom's granddaughter Nanaz, are both played brilliantly by Nadiya Chettiar . She morphs from angry teenager to confused child to blushing bride with amazing ease. In fact, almost all the actors are called upon to play multiple roles, and do so superbly.
The staging is innovative, with hanging bolts of cloth as an adjustable backdrop, and fabric representing everything from blood to the evening sky. The story and images will stay with you long after you leave the theatre.