Wish You Were Here

3.5, rounded up. Toossi just won the Pulitzer Prize for her debut play, English, and this was her second to be produced, which got good reviews also. It's, oddly enough, kind of an Iranian version of Steel Magnolias - it concerns five Iranian women living in that country between 1978 and 1991, and fo......more

This is a beautiful play. It begins in 1978 in Karaj, Iran. Salme is getting ready for her wedding; her friends are seated around her and are equally mocking and cajoling her. Shideh is ridiculing Zari's toes; Rana and Nazanin are complaining about the heat; Rana turns the fan directly toward her lo......more

A powerful dialogue-driven tale of Iranian women loving each other, losing each other, and trying to figure out if there is such a place as “home.” As a white American I’m imminently aware that this country isn’t *my* home, I was basically just born on top of a military base called “America” that wa......more

This was a gorgeous play, beautifully acted. I was so swept up in the lives of these women, who made what was to me a sad event in another place intimate and real. I love work that opens my eyes.......more

This book succeeds, in my opinion, because it know what it's about. This is not a treatise on the Iranian Revolution, nor is it an epic of the Immigrant Experience. It is an image from the life of a group of friends, human and breaking and loving. More than most plays, this feels so intimate, so true......more