Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – With Rajiv Joseph’s lovely LETTERS OF SURESH, Second Stage gently resumes in-person performances

• By drediman
• October 13, 2021
• No Comments

Last night, Second Stage Theater’s production of Letters of Suresh by Rajiv Joseph opened Off-Broadway at the Tony Kiser Theater (the play’s opening night was pushed back due to one of the actors testing positive for Covid). For over a decade now, Mr. Joseph has been a distinctive voice in American Theater, having penned atmospheric plays such as Gruesome Playground Injuries, Guards at the Taj, and Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo (which was a 2010 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama) . The playwrights’s latest brings to life the bilateral letter correspondences – each performed in first person by the respective letter writer – among four very different but equally yearning souls.

In content, form, and tone, the play seems an ideal choice for Second Stage to gently and smartly resume in-person performances after a year-and-a-half of being on hiatus (which is interesting given that the piece had been written before the pandemic). Its Rashomon-like shifts in perspectives – which center around, but are not exclusive to, the found letters between a deceased Japanese priest (Father Hashimoto) a troubled young Indian-American prodigy (Suresh) – result in a lovely, painterly play that shimmers like an impressionist work of art. Although it solves mysteries along, the play simultaneously uncovers more questions as it unfolds itself across time and space, suggesting life’s incessant ability to confound. By going down this rabbit hole of correspondences, Mr. Joseph also achingly manifests our deep need for and the inherent fragility of human connection.

Luckily, the play’s monologue structure supports a socially distanced staging, which director May Adrales has elegantly appended with dreamy visual flourishes. The performances across the board are excellent, beginning with the play’s two larger parts, as vividly yet sensitively played by Ali Ahn (as Melody, the late Father Hashimoto’s restless daughter) and Ramiz Monsef (as Suresh). The smaller roles are no less beautifully portrayed by Kellie Overbey (as Suresh’s lover Amelia) and Thom Sesma (Father Hashimoto). Mr. Sesma’s delivery of Father Hashimoto’s bittersweet final letter to Suresh concludes the play in a serene but profound manner that still lingers in my mind.

RECOMMENDED

LETTERS OF SURESH
Off-Broadway, Play
Second Stage Theater at the Tony Kiser Theater
1 hour, 30 minutes (without an intermission)
Through October 24