Review: IRAQ, BUT FUNNY at Lookingglass Theatre Company

If you ask me, the American theater is entering a golden age of creative historical revisionism. Just the other week, Cole Escola won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play for their delightfully hysterical, proudly ahistorical portrayal of Mary Todd Lincoln as a “rather well-known niche cabaret legend” in OH, MARY! Two of the nominees for Best Musical this year (OPERATION MINCEMEAT and DEAD OUTLAW) take obscure—even bizarre—episodes from history and put a comedic spin on them to address serious topics of legacy, humanity, and the ways our pasts can speak to our present moment. Now another new play in a similar vein deserves to be considered in the same high regard as these Popular Productions. Astra Asdou’s IRAQ, BUT FUNNY, receiving its world premiere at the freshly reopened Lookingglass Theatre, serves not only as a masterful satire of British and American colonialism in the Middle East but also as a moving, multigenerational family drama that elicits sympathy for an immigrant family searching for the freedom and promising future they so desperately crave. The production runs through July 20 at Lookingglass’s home on Michigan Avenue.

A celebrated Lookingglass Ensemble member, Asdou has written IRAQ, BUT FUNNY as a semi-autobiographical play that traces five generations of Assyrian women from the Ottoman Empire to the American invasion of Iraq. And as the country changes, so too does the family. Audiences watch as these women go from arranged marriages to relative social equality with men to the familiar menace of American xenophobia. But the play’s most delightful dramaturgical device is to have much of the play’s historical and cultural events narrated by TEG, “The English Gentleman” (played by Asdou herself) who claims to be a better scholar of the region and its people than the inhabitants themselves.

The history of Iraq over the last century is an incredibly complex one, but Asdou and her worthy collaborator and director Dalia Ashurina have managed to provide audiences with the most important episodes and beats from this history in highly accessible ways even as they demand the careful attention of their audience. For example, the protracted sectarian violence of the Iran-Iraq War turns into a no holds barred boxing match between Saddam Hussein and Ayatollah Khomeini, with TEG as the announcer. A succession of assassinations of Iraqi political figures is presented via an overhead projector and annotated slides reminiscent of a 1990s social studies class. Even if you don’t catch every historical detail or have trouble keeping track of which colonial power is in charge at any given time, you can easily appreciate how much energy, thought, and love Asdou and Ashurina have injected into this story.

As TEG, Asdou is in her element as a parody of an Orientalist scholar lecturing his students about the helplessness of the Assyrian people that have lived in the area that is now Iraq for thousands of years. From the moment she swings into the auditorium in a starched uniform and pith helmet, Asdou captivates the audiences for the rest of the evening, balancing physical comedy and farce with glimmers of menace and desperation. She also knows how to work a crowd, encouraging audience interactions that lead to delightful callbacks (and the occasional temporary embarrassment).

But in between all these beats, the Assyrian family at the heart of IRAQ, BUT FUNNY reminds us of the concrete human cost of such seismic changes. The remaining four performers in the play portray set members within each generation of this family. For example, Gloria Imseih Petrelli consistently portrays a young, often rebellious daughter deciding whether it is better to follow her heart or uphold the traditions that have been thrust upon her (Sina Pooresmaeil plays Petrelli’s bumbling but lovable fiancés). This convention can take some getting used to at first; especially in early scenes, it may not be immediately clear that the play has moved on to the next generation in the story. But once the cast settles into their rhythms and audiences pick up on identifying costume pieces (designed by Mara Blumenfeld), it’s easy to sit back and enjoy the story unfolding before you.

Petrelli and Pooresmaeil both have the endearing innocence of young couples in love, but Petrelli in particular gives her characters significant power and agency. One of the play’s more profound moments comes when one of Petrelli’s characters wrestles her family history away from TEG and insists on illustrating the power women held in Iraq before the rise of Saddam in the later decades of the twentieth century. This moment not only allows Petrelli to show off her dramatic acting skills, but it also disrupts audience assumptions about women’s agency in the Middle East.

Similarly, Susaan Jamshidi plays the matriarch of each generation, overseeing her family with power (and occasional fury) as she reminds her daughter that—for better or worse—her life is not necessarily her own to live. This message is repeated throughout the play for emphasis, but Jamshidi imbues these words with freshness and urgency each time, allowing the piece’s serious elements to stand out even more brilliantly from the comedy. Rounding out the cast is James Rana, who doubles up not only as the patriarchal counterpart to Jamshidi but also as a series of religious figures who practice brandishing their weapons just as frequently as he performs marriage ceremonies. Rana has a gravitas about him that commands respect for his characters, but he also isn’t afraid to poke fun at the challenges all fathers face when sending their daughters off into the unknown.

IRAQ, BUT FUNNY makes for a delightfully raucous evening’s entertainment that will keep audiences laughing long after the show has ended while reminding them of the deeply human stories that have come out of a region that has seen far too much tragedy and injustice over the decades. Given our current political climate, I can’t imagine an original piece with a timelier message.

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