In the early 2000s, before I was married, I lived for five years on the Sunnyside/Woodside border with a good buddy whose mom is from Longford and whose dad is from Iran. During these same years, a cousin of mine from Whitestone married a girl from Long Island whose mother is Puerto Rican and whose father is Iranian. So-called mixed-marriages of this sort have a long history of furnishing the plot device for American popular culture. Many scholars have noted that the Mulligan Guard musicals Harrigan and Hart produced in the 1870s often used Irish-German couples for comic effect. And Lawrence Baron, in his article “Irish-Jewish Couples in American Film and Television,” traces this plot device across such diverse fare as the Broadway play “Abie’s Irish Rose” (1922) and the tv series “Bridget Loves Bernie” (1972).
I brought this personal familiarity and literary interest in cross-ethnic romances to my recent viewing of Benjamin Gassman’s engrossing new play “Adult Relationships.” Gassman, a Queens native himself, has created a dark comedy focusing on the relationship between former lovers Nageen, an Iranian-American children’s author (played by Layla Khoshnoudi), and Noah, a Jewish-American chef and failed restauranteur (played by Jess Barbagallo). While both are now married to other partners and have become parents, a chance reunion in the old neighborhood leads to a night of conversation and confession. The occasion of their reunion is the wake of a troubled mutual friend named Haris who has died from his drug addiction. The play is set in the recent past, the covid-19 era suggested by the masks the characters wear when they first appear on stage praying before the closed casket. The setting is further established when the characters make a passing reference to the riotous events of Jan. 6, 2021.
The mention of that date reminded me of James Joyce’s short story “The Dead,” which takes place on Jan. 6, 1904, the Feast of the Epiphany, and was published in his collection "Dubliners" in 1914. Like Gassman’s play, “The Dead” focuses on a couple, Gabriel and Greta Conroy, who are reckoning with desire in the presence of a ghost. Whereas in Joyce’s story it is the wife’s first love, Michael Furey, whose spectral presence hovers over the end of the story, “Adult Relationships” is haunted throughout by the ghostly voicemails of Haris, whose commentary is delivered in a funny, profane patois of millennial slang. Like Joyce’s short story, Gassman’s play uses the central romantic relationship to explore much larger philosophical and political themes. Mortality, sexual morality, the legacy of 9/11, the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, class consciousness, are all discussed as Nageen and Noah probe their shared past.
It is very challenging to hold an audience’s attention for 90 minutes with only two main characters, but Gassman has done it. While the statuesque Lena Engelstein often gracefully moves across the stage playing a variety of secondary characters (other friends at the wake, a waitress, a lounge singer), the play is all about the dialogue between Barbagallo’s Noah and Khoshnoudi’s Nageen. The fact that we care about their complicated inter-ethnic, Queens-rooted relationship is a testament to the talent of the playwright and these two actors.
“Adult Relationships” is playing at the Collapsable Hole, 155 Bank St., through Friday, Nov. 21. For more information and tickets, click here.
