'Authentic and evocative': Baroness Hale reviews 'Wish You Were Here'

Left to right: Maryam Grace (Zari), Isabella Nefar (Shideh), Emily Renée (Salme), Juliette Motamed (Rana) and Afsaneh Dehrouyeh (Nazanin) | Photography by: Richard Lakos

Baroness Hale of Richmond

The Gate Theatre Company has moved away from its original space above a pub in Notting Hill, but its mission is still to bring ground-breaking international work to London. In staging the UK premiere of Wish You Were Here at the tiny Theatro Technis near Mornington Crescent Tube station, it has done just that. This is not the 1952 musical but a dramatic comedy by Pulitzer prize-winning Iranian-American Sanaz Toossi, first staged in Williamstown, Massachusetts in 2020.

It follows the fortunes, from 1978 to 1991, of an originally close-knit friendship group of five young Iranian women leading comfortable middle-class lives – their various homes are represented by a large sofa and a beautiful Iranian rug.

Momentous events are going on outside – the first stirrings of the Iranian revolution, the arrival of Ayatollah Khomeini as Supreme Leader, the increasing restrictions on women’s lives, and the losses of the Iran-Iraq war – noises of which are cunningly invoked by an evocative soundtrack. But the real story is female friendship – how it endures and how it can fall apart.

The play begins with the friends helping the nervous bride, Salme, prepare for her wedding. There is Shideh, smart and rather waspish, who wants to be a doctor; Zari, girlish and playful; Nazanin, who wants to be an engineer; and Rana, who is Jewish. They are all having great fun, with much bawdy chat about what Salme can expect when she loses her virginity. And the audience has great fun too, because much of the dialogue is very funny.

It is a play which ought to appeal to men and women alike

As time moves on, the women continue to have fun, discussing the things which women discuss when there are no men about: sex, menstruation, yeast infections, body hair, waxing. This all rings very true. But of course, things are not all fun. Rana, their Jewish friend, disappears. It is thought that she and her family have gone to Israel.

There are glimpses of how they must dress if they go outside. One by one, they go their separate ways. Shideh does manage to study medicine, but she must go to the United States to do so. Zari also goes to the States, where she works in a fast-food restaurant and puts on a brave face but doesn’t sound very happy. Nazanin is still there, but she does not get to be an engineer. The carpet is rolled up.

On one level, this is a universal picture of female friendship, which could be played out anywhere in the developed world. But on another level, this is a picture of how hard it is to lead normal lives when things which were formerly taken for granted – education, opportunity, freedom – are falling apart. It is a play which ought to appeal to men and women alike. And it is all very well done – the staging, the soundtrack, the direction, and above all the acting, by five young women of Iranian heritage. The Gate Theatre (chaired by Baroness Chakrabarti) is to be congratulated.

Baroness Hale of Richmond is a Crossbench peer

Wish You Were Here
Directed by: Sepy Baghaei
Written by: Sanaz Toossi
Venue: Gate Theatre, NW1, until Saturday 23 November

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