Nikita Chaudhry and Suni M! (Photo by Nick Graves)
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Greenway Court Theatre
Through November 19
RECOMMENDED
The phrase “American Born Confused Desi,” which has been around for years, refers to the challenges and confusion experienced by South Asian — i.e. “Desi” — individuals, straddling the cultural divide between American culture and their endemic Indian Asian roots. Although considered pejorative by some in the South Asian community, the term has given rise to several alphabetically based offshoots, including the colorfully tongue-in-cheek “Kids Learning Medicine, Now Owning Property.”
That tongue-in-cheek quality is reflected in Lily Abha Cratsley’s lively new play ABCD (American Born Confused Desi), now enjoying a limited run at the Greenway Court Theatre. An intergenerational comedy drama that examines the differences and commonalities of three female South Asian family members, ABCDhas plenty of down-to-earth, slice-of-life humor. Yet it also makes serious points about the difficulties of assimilation and the ever-present danger of racial hatred in American society.
Cratsley’s beautifully delineated characters include the widowed Nani (Suni M!), who has traveled from India to attend her granddaughter Tara’s solo performance in the classical Bharatanatyam dance form she has been studying.
Nani shares a close bond with her other granddaughter, Willow (Nikita Chaudhry), a college student and activist who is anxious to embrace every aspect of South Asian traditions. Not so close is the relationship between Nani and her daughter Aditi (Sonal Shah), a thoroughly Americanized divorcée who can’t bridge the gap between her mother’s Old-World expectations and her daughter Willow’s cultural zealotry.
As soon as Nani arrives from the Newark airport, the friction between Nani and Aditi heats up, as Nani slyly criticizes the smaller home that Aditi has moved into since her divorce. To Aditi’s increasing irritation, Nani also insists on taking over the preparation for the feast that Aditi had painstakingly planned for her daughter Tara. However, when Willow admits that Tara has no intention of attending the dinner but is staying at her father’s place to “rehearse,” Nani and Aditi’s shared disappointment softens their prickliness, revealing the deep and complex affection under their outward fractiousness.
The jewel in the crown of this excellent production design is Jane Hamor’s utilitarian set, which hints that Aditi, a hard-working professional woman, has been reduced from the opulent to the ordinary since her divorce, much to the perplexity and disapproval of Nani, who believes that good wives should be in it for the long haul, whatever their disappointments. For her part, Aditi nurtures lingering resentment for being pressured into marrying a man she never loved.
Director J. Mehr Kaur elicits nuanced performances from a ready cast. Chaudhry’s Willow is a bouncing puppy of the social justice warrior variety — all youthful verve and certainty. She holds her mother in contempt for abandoning her South Asian roots — until, in a moving and penultimate scene, she learns the legacy of bullying and self-protection that prompted Aditi’s assimilation.
As Aditi, Shah perfectly personifies the embattled weariness of one who had to step outside of her “good wife” role, and who now faces the judgement of not only her mother’s generation, but, most frustratingly, her daughter, who harshly judges her defection from the cultural ranks.
In a performance of virtuosic wryness and subtlety, M!’s Nani ranges from the comically domineering to an underplayed emotionalism of shattering power. Her monologue about the terrifying Dotbusters (a reference to the bindi, or dot, worn on South Asian women’s foreheads) — a late 1980s Jersey City hate group that targeted South Asians and sent her and her husband fleeing back to India — is a terrifying reminder that once arguably sporadic episodes of racial hatred have now become everyday occurrences spilling over into all walks of American life.
Greenway Court Theatre, 544 N. Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles. Sat. 3 and 7 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m. Ends Nov. 19. (323) 673-0544. www.GreenwayCourtTheatre.org. 80 minutes with no intermission.
