Royal pain
Domestic drama escalates to regicide and revenge in Darvag's production of Iranian playwright Bahram Beyzaie's The Death of Yazdgerd.

By Robert Avila

MODERN IRANIAN DRAMA really took off from the late 1950s through the 1970s. Influenced aesthetically by Western theater as well as a rich indigenous tradition both religious and secular in nature, it was from the first a socially engaged enterprise, frequently concerned with deep-seated problems in Iranian society as the country sought "modernization" on a Western model. Nevertheless, the medium attracted a number of real artists. Worldwide, it remains – in contrast to the country's vaunted cinema – an underappreciated achievement.

Darvag, the East Bay-based Iranian American theater company founded in 1985, offers a rare venue, at Ashby Stage, for such work, in addition to its original plays. With its production of Bahram Beyzaie's The Death of Yazdgerd, the company returns to one of Iran's most highly regarded playwrights – and filmmakers – after staging his Eighth Voyage of Sinbad with the Shotgun Players in 1999.

A sly and sophisticated allegory of social disintegration amid corruption and class exploitation, Beyzaie's story is built around the death in 651 of the last Sassanid king, Yazdgerd III, whose reign coincided with the Arab invasion and the eclipsing of the Zoroastrian kings by the Islamic age. As a noted scholar of Persian art, Beyzaie draws heavily here, as in most of his work, on history, folklore, and traditional dramatic forms to craft a penetrating play with a highly symbolic and metaphorical aspect. (Due to his uncompromising political concerns throughout his career, which stretches back to the early 1960s, Beyzaie has faced significant government censorship both before and after the 1978-to-1979 revolution. His film version of The Death of Yazdgerd, for example, has never received a screening permit in Iran).

As the play opens, Yazdgerd's men, fresh from the chaos of battle and in pursuit of their missing king, find his slain body lying on a millstone in the dilapidated hovel of a desperately poor miller (Richard Louis James), his wife (Bella Warda), and their daughter (Sara Razavi). (History relates that Yazdgerd did in fact die in a mill, though the subsequent whereabouts of his body and the reason for his death remain mysteries.) As the enemy rallies in the distance, the king's commander (Ali Dadgar) – flanked by a captain (Nicholas A. Olivero) and a high priest (D. Anthony Harper) – prepares to "administer justice" in the form of a slow death for the apparently regicidal miller and his family. But first the king's men want to hear the condemned give a full account of the king's last hours. Pleading their innocence, the miller and his family take turns acting out what happened in the most circuitous and contradictory fashion, staving off death with a story that unfolds as both a domestic drama and a bitter tale of class oppression and revenge.

In Darvag's production, the heavily presentational style overseen by director Evren Odcikin, while appropriate enough, can work against the nuance in tone and character that Beyzaie's play seems to call for. Vigorous performances from Warda as the miller's strong-willed wife, Razavi as his sickly and delirious daughter, and especially James as the fearful but canny miller do much to push the emotional range of the entire piece, especially into the lower registers. In general, there's a bit too much shouting. And while Odcikin manages a fairly static stage surprisingly well, the actors can seem in limbo where his attention flags, and the characterizations and relationships weaken accordingly. This is especially the case with respect to the king's men, which perhaps partly explains why the able Dadgar's potent Persian warrior frequently wanes in general intensity.

Though the production is uneven, it also gradually gains momentum. Manuchehr Anvar's English translation, stiff at points, flows nicely overall. Moreover, a compelling atmosphere is established from the outset by Dadgar and Odcikin's impressive wood-and-burlap set, lighting designer Jim Cave's palpable desert dusk, Ninva Bitmansour's convincing costuming, and Kourosh Taghavi and Bengi's traditional score.

In the end, the play remains intriguing despite the production's limitations. Beyzaie brilliantly blends the central problems and injustices of society with larger existential questions until we're convinced of their inextricable relation to one another. Just so, the domestic drama of a poor miller's family includes, at the most intimate level, the destiny of a marauding and soul-sick king, until even the miller's and the king's bodies are indistinguishable – two interchangeable aspects of the same national catastrophe. Meanwhile, the invaders are at the door.

'The Death of Yazdgerd' runs through Sept. 18. Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m., Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk. $10-$20. (510) 595-4607, www.darvag.org.