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CALIFORNIA TURKISH TIMES

 

TALL HOSTS CAST OF PERA PALAS

Turkish Themed Party

On Saturday, July 9, 2005, the stars shone bright in the heavens and provided a beautiful night of dining, drinking and dancing a la Turca for the stars of the cast of Pera Palas, premiering on the west coast at the Theatre at Boston Court in Pasadena.

 

The Mustafoglu estate in Beverly Hills hosted the magnificent kick-off for the play which opens July 23, 2005. Demetra, founder of Tall and husband Mehmet, Hon. Consul General of N. Cyprus opened their home to around 80 people for this joyous occasion and along with the incredible Board of the Turkish American Ladies League (Asuman Yilmaz-Jasmine Doker, Arzu Simsek, Zinnur Guvenc) led by Chairwomen Ilgin Gallo and Yasemin Ari presented a night and a food feast that will long be remembered by the cast and support members of the play. The Turkish food and drink was plentiful with surprise entertainment by two wonderful ud players Bekir and his friend. The Board danced and ignited the cast into jumping in and trying a part of their newly found Turkish culture. No one wanted to go home till the night turned cold. It was a Turkish-fest!

 

Producer Michael Michetti and Directors Jeannie Hackett and John Apicella brought along a most appreciative group ready and willing to become immersed in the Turkish culture for play research and the love of embracing a little known ( to them) but rich culture. They even practiced their Turkish with the party presenters getting last minute tips!

 

TALL invites you to a special performance of PERA PALAS on Sunday, August 7 at 70 N. Mentor Avenue in Pasadena. There will be a 6p.m. reception and a 7 p.m. curtain or you may attend the 2p.m matinee with a reception following. Portions of the proceeds from these 2 performances will be donated to TALL's designated charities which are blind children's schools and underprivileged and sick children here and in Turkey. The play presents 3 families in Turkey through a time span from the late 1800's to the 1980's and is authored by Sinan Unel.

 

Please come and share this monumental occasion with your Turkish and American friends. It's a rare event to have a Turkish play translated and presented in English for ALL to enjoy!

 

Tell a friend; Bring a friend; Be a friend!

 

GORGEOUS Magazine

JUN/JUL 05

 

Travis Michael Holder's

SHOW & TELL

 

Antaeus Theatre Company, recently responsible for the incredible environmental staging of Brecht's Mother Courage in a converted NoHo warehouse, partners with The Theatre @ Boston Court in Pasadena and T@BC's co-artistic director Michael Michetti to present the west coast premiere of Sinan Unel's provocative Pera Palas. Ten of Antaeus' gifted actors (Antaeuns?) play 27 American, British and Turkish characters crossing paths in Istanbul's Pera Palas Hotel first in 1918, then 1952, and finally in 1994. The epic tale includes the chronicle of two Turkish families living through nearly a century of changes, including a major crisis point when Murat, a young Turkish-American gay man, brings his lover Brian to Istanbul in an attempt to heal old family wounds and make his father accept him for who he is. Unel explores cultural flash points and what happens when emigration turns from personal liberation into a political act. Fascinating stuff, guaranteed, and no one does theatre better than Antaeus, T@BC, or the unstoppable Mr. Michetti.

 

PASADENA WEEKLY

 

08/12/2005 05:26 PM

PASADENA WEEKLY: Greater Pasadena's Alternative News and Entertainment Weekly

-fall arts preview 2005 - theater

By Jana J. Monji

Fly away to a legendary hotel. Watch a homicide being masterfully planned. Follow along as mysterious strangers become catalysts for change. Witness the ending of an era. The magic of the theater can take you there, and you can even see some plays before they take a gamble on the New York crowds. "Pera Palas," Sinan Unel's humorous examination of East meeting West, takes place in the hotel where Agatha Christie wrote "Murder on the Orient Express." A co-production with the Anteus Co., "Pera Palas" closes at the Theatre@Boston Court on Aug. 28.

 

The Theatre@Boston Court

70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena

(626) 683-6883

www.BostonCourt.com

Through Aug. 28: Sinan Unel's "Pera Palas"

Oct. 8: Bertolt Brecht's 1941 "Mother Courage" opens

 

GORGEOUS Magazine

AUG/SEP 05

 

Travis Michael Holder's

SHOW & TELL

 

Theatre @ Boston Court and the Antaeus Company have joined their considerable forces to present the west coast premiere of Sinan Ünel's epic Pera Palas, an incisive, humorous, and moving larger-than-life production set in Istanbul's palatial Pera Palas Hotel. The remarkable cast includes such local theatrical heroes as my dear friend Bill Brochtrup, for a dozen years NYPD Blue's resident homo and recent star of the Dahlia's award-winning Theater District, playing opposite Seamus Dever, who knocked El Lay on its ass as the lead droogie in Greenway Court's Clockwork Orange and was so memorable as a kept boytoy in the Fountain's otherwise disastrous Men from the Boys, alternating with Daniel Blinkoff and Daniel Bess as a very untraditional-by Islamic standards-pair of male lovers.

 

The double-cast ensemble also features Tessa Thompson, the incredibly talented young beauty who played my daughter in Chuck Mee's also epic-sized Summertime at this same theatre last year; Gigi Bermingham, who almost was my secret love in Murray Mednick's Fedunn at the Odyssey before she had the sense to move on to greener climes; the inimitable Apollo Dukakis, such a knockout this year in Anna in the Tropics at Pasadena Playhouse; Melinda Peterson, Ladies of the Camellias' delightfully dour diva Eleanora Duse at the Colony; Harry Groener, three-time Tony nominee for Oklahoma!, Cats, and Crazy for You; and Antaeus' stalwart artistic director Jeanie Hackett.

In Pera Palas, hotel guests strive to keep up with the changing world as interconnecting intergenerational stories crisscross three tumultuously historical periods while Turkey straddles Asia and Europe, Islam and Christianity, tradition and modernity. The collaboration began when Antaeus workshopped the piece two years ago and asked Boston Court's Michael Michetti, my very favorite LA director, to bring his unearthly talents to the project. "The play epitomizes theatricality," Michetti says with signature infectious enthusiasm. "Actors cross lines of race, age and gender portraying sprawling families whose personal stories beautifully parallel Turkey's history from the last breaths of the Ottoman Empire to the present." Thanks to his theatre's unstoppable production values, including a set by LADCC Lifetime Achievement honoree Tom Buderwitz, expect your jaw to drop about to there when you see the size and scope of this show. I couldn't be more excited by this one, except that I'm a little pissed no one asked me to be in it.

 

 

LOS ANGELES TIMES

 

The real Turkey, as if in a dream

Sinan Ünel's well-received "Pera Palas" is an enlightening portrait of Turkey's high-wire act of balancing European and Islamic influences.

By Don Shirley, Times Staff Writer

 

When the San Francisco-born but Turkish-reared playwright Sinan Ünel attended the University of Kansas, he found that most Americans knew very little about Turkey. The predominantly Islamic country's proximity to many Arab states makes people "think it's an Arab country," he says. "It's like confusing America with Mexico because they're both Christian countries in the same area."

 

Ünel's "Pera Palas" is likely to enlighten its audience about Turkey and the country's high-wire act of balancing European and Islamic influences. In a well-received production at the Theatre @ Boston Court in Pasadena, "Pera Palas" interweaves three stories from disparate periods of Turkey's relationship with the West: 1918-24, 1952-53 and 1994. Part of each story is set in a room at Istanbul's Pera Palas hotel.

 

The ideas for the three stories arrived in Ünel's brain while he was hospitalized for an emergency appendectomy. "I don't know if it was the morphine," he says.

 

The play isn't hard to follow, as long as theatergoers understand that the three stories periodically interrupt each other. But there is an aspect that might look slightly drug- induced - some of the characters are played by actors of the other gender, and most of the actors play more than one role.

 

"The play is about identity and its changeability - it's extremely changeable in my view," Ünel explains. And though he acknowledges that the gender-swapping can be strange, "the challenge is to make it real, not campy." Ünel's own identity has always felt divided. "In Turkey, I felt American. Here, I felt Turkish," he says. "There's always a feeling that I'm never home." In the play, one character is, like Ünel, the son of an American mother and a Turkish father who lives in the U.S. but returns to Turkey with his male lover in the ‘90s. Yet there are differences between the character and the writer. Ünel's parents lived in southern Turkey, not Istanbul. They met at the University of Michigan, not in Turkey. The fictional character is a photographer, not a playwright. Still, Ünel spent time in Istanbul when he was attending boarding school. He returns to Turkey for visits every couple of years - including a trip this year for research on another play. His mother lives in Mersin in southern Turkey; his father died five years ago.

 

Contemporary Turkey, Ünel says, has "two roads veering away from each other," along similar lines to what he per-ceives in the U.S. "A gay presence has made itself quite visible in the last three or four years," while at the same timeIslamic fundamentalism has spread. "We never saw women in veils as I grew up. Now they're all over the place." Ünel says he wasn't thinking in political terms when he wrote the play in 1995. But political events have increased interest in the play. "Every time something happens," he says, "the play resonates in a different way."

 

Jeanie Hackett, one of the artistic directors of the North Hollywood-based Antaeus Company, became excited by the play at what she calls a "very minimally staged" 1998 production in New York.

 

She acknowledges that one of its attractions was a role - actually, two roles - that she wanted to play. But she had other reasons. "It's about how change and loss can rip us apart" - a theme that especially touched her because her fiancé had recently died of cancer.

 

Hackett organized a reading at the Antaeus theater in 2002, but "it didn't work. It was a mess." With actors playing more than one role apiece, "nobody knew who was who. It's the worst play on the planet for a sit-down reading."

 

A more fully staged workshop in 2003 was more successful. "Turkish couples came and left in tears," she says.

 

This year's staging is a co-production between Antaeus and the Theatre @ Boston Court, directed by Michael Michetti, a Boston Court artistic director. Hackett is playing the two roles that interested her, but all of the parts are double cast.

 

Ünel, who has lived in Provincetown, Mass., since 1984, attended four rehearsals in Pasadena. "We all wanted to pick his brain," Hackett says. "But you had to ask. He wasn't going to impose anything on anybody."

 

While he was in Pasadena, the playwright turned 47. He was amazed when, within 10 minutes of filling out a seemingly routine form that asked for his birthday, the company walked in with a cake that had his name on it and sang "Happy Birthday."

 

It was a better reception than he got when he stayed at the actual Pera Palas hotel for the first time, after the play had been produced. The hotel management had heard about the play and offered him a free stay of one night. But "they didn't give me an especially nice room," he says. "It's not a great hotel."

*

'Pera Palas'

Where: Theatre @ Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor, Pasadena

When: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays

Ends: Sept. 4

Price: $30

Contact: (626) 683-6883; www.bostoncourt.org

 

 

ASSOCIATION OF TURKISH AMERICANS OF SOUTHERN CALFORNIA

 

Sinan Unel's "Pera Palas" Opens July 23, 24 in Pasadena

 

PASADENA, Calif., June 16, 2005 – The Theatre @ Boston Court and The Antaeus Company are joining forces to present the West Coast premiere of Sinan Ünel's "Pera Palas," opening on the mainstage at Boston Court July 23 and 24. Ten actors will play 27 roles - Turks, British and Americans - in this incisive, humorous and moving story set in Istanbul's palatial Pera Palas hotel.

 

Three 20^th century periods of Turkish history are illuminated as hotel guests strive to keep up with the changing world around them. Interconnecting, intergenerational stories criss-cross these tumultuous periods in a country straddling Asia and Europe, Islam and Christianity, tradition and modernity.

 

"Pera Palas" was performed off-Broadway in 1999. This current exciting collaboration between The Theatre @ Boston Court and The Antaeus Company began when Antaeus decided to do a workshop of the piece more than two years ago and asked Michael Michetti, co-artistic director of The Theatre @ Boston Court, to direct. "The play epitomizes theatricality," according to Michetti. "Actors cross lines of race, age and gender portraying sprawling families whose personal stories beautifully parallel Turkey's history from the last breaths of the Ottoman Empire to the present."

 

Notes Antaeus Company co-artistic director Jeanie Hackett, "'Pera Palas' deals with what happens to a great culture when it begins to splinter and wither. Sinan gives us a wonderful portrayal of a country struggling to face its history while bumping up against the demands of the 21^st century."

 

Ünel's plays have been produced regionally and all over the world. For "Pera Palas," Ünel was awarded The John Gassner Memorial Award, The Daryl Roth Creative Spirit Award, The Panowski New Play Contest (finalist), and a Massachusetts Cultural Council New Plays Grant. Ünel is currently a commissioned Playwriting Fellow with the Huntington Theatre Company under the Stanford Calderwood Fund for New American Plays.

 

For The Theatre @ Boston Court, Michetti has directed Chuck Mee's "Summertime" and the company's inaugural production, "Romeo and Juliet: Antebellum New Orleans, 1836." His production of Tom Jacobson's "Ouroboros" had a successful four-month run last fall at the Road Theatre, winning the L.A. Weekly Award for Production of the Year.

The Theatre @ Boston Court is the non-profit theatrical production company that programs for the main stage in the Boston Court performing arts complex in Pasadena. This is the award-winning company's second season producing plays that challenge both artists and audiences.

The Antaeus Company was founded in 1990 as a pilot project of the Mark Taper Forum and in 1995 became a nonprofit corporation, producing top- quality classical theatre. Now under the artistic direction of John Apicella and Hackett, Antaeus' 2004 production of four Chekhov one-acts, "Chekhov X 4," including one directed by Michetti, was one of Los Angeles's most lauded shows. This year, the company's "Mother Courage" received critical raves and performed to sold-out houses.

 

"Pera Palas" previews for six performances beginning July 14, opens July 23 and 24, and runs Thursdays to Sundays through August 28. Preview tickets are priced at $15 and regular performances cost $30. Senior and student discounts are also available. Tickets can be purchased online at www.bostoncourt.org or by calling (626) 683-6883. Boston Court is located at 70 North Mentor, one block north of Colorado at Boston Ct. For reservations to Press Nights, Saturday, July 23, 8 pm or Sunday, July 24, 7 pm, sandy@aldrichpr.com

 

CALENDAR

The Theatre @ Boston Court and The Antaeus Company present the West Coast premiere of Sinan Ünel's "Pera Palas," an incisive, humorous, moving story set in a palatial Istanbul Hotel and featuring a cast of 10 playing 27 roles. Previews July 14, opens July 23 and 24, and runs Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2 and 7 p.m. though August 28 (no matinee performance on Sunday, July 24) at Boston Court, 70 North Mentor, Pasadena. Tickets: $15 previews, $30 regular, available online at www.bostoncourt.org or the box office at 626-683-6883.

 

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND EVENTS ILLUMINATING "PERA PALAS"

 

1918-24: The post-war Ottoman Empire is occupied by, among other entities, the British Empire. The Ottoman Empire fades and the League of Nations assumes administrative custody. Republic of Turkey is born under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and the beginnings of social, political and linguistic reforms transform Turkey into a modern Western state.

 

1952-53: After World War II, Turkey becomes a representative democracy with a multi-party system. Turkey joins NATO and American Cold War bluster and big business infect the country.

 

Mid-1990s: A time of political unrest, social revolution, and fondness for fading tradition. Muslim fundamentalism makes resurgence as Islamic influenced political parties are popularized, and women are seen wearing veils on the streets for the first time in over a half century. Economy is hard hit when U.N. sponsored sanctions against Iraq curtail oil and commodities transit trade.

 

 

CALIFORNIA TURKISH TIMES

 

The First Published Turkish Newspaper in California

11 August 2005 Online Edition - Issue:7

Pera Palas - A Pearl in Theater's Crown

A glorious theater experience that will leave you wanting more.

By Leyla Gulen

Staff Writer

 

Through the doors of an Istanbul hotel lie the intersection of time and fate. So seamless is this interaction in the West Coast premier of Sinan Unel's "Pera Palas."

 

Set at the famed 114 year old metropolitan hotel, a crossroads unto itself, Unel masterfully weaves a web of three separate story lines set in three different time periods, 1918 to 1924, 1952 to 1953 and 1994.

 

All 10 actors playing 27 characters, with their unique connection to the hotel and not wholly disconnected from each other, brilliantly brought to life what is joyfully complex and utterly logical all at the same time.

 

It's as if Unel took hold of the sky, earth and sea and braided them together into one singular being while delicately maintaining each strand as independent. The most independent tress, on many levels, begins in 1918 and centers around a British journalist (Gigi Bermingham) who has come to Turkey to document her travels. She meets a young Turkish girl (Rebecca Mozo), the daughter of a wealthy Pasha, who invites her to stay at the Pasha's harem. The no-nonsense journalist, while impressed with a life of little ambition and nothing more to worry about than a stroll through private gardens, is gobbsmacked by the bliss of ignorance and the inequality of the female race in Turkey.

 

Both Bermingham and Mozo make such a convincing pair that one can only feel disappointment at the heartache resulting from the strained relationship that awaits them in the future. Mozo plays a splendid Turkish girl with boundless energy and a well-attempted accent, not to mention quite authentic in her Turkish utterances except for one huge discrepancy when she called her father ‘papa' and not ‘baba.' Mozo exudes the subservient nature of a girl devoted to Turkish tradition and societal norm without waiver. Bermingham, embodies a self-secure British woman caught in the midst of using her own freedom while impressing upon her fellow female to shed the scarf and be seen by the world.

 

The same theme of independence plays out in 1994 in the lives of two male lovers, one American (Daniel Blinkoff) and one Turkish (Daniel Bess), who find themselves unable to announce their union to blood ties in a country, in so many ways, steeped in tradition yet shrouded by the guise of modernity. As Bess's character says with spite and bitterness, "All that glitters in Turkey is gold." While hiding out at the Pera Palas, more is revealed than expected.

 

Blinkoff, with his flaming antics, added just the right splash of humor to tastefully juxtapose what is, at times, a somber play. And, Bess personified a Turkish man faced with the struggle of identity.

 

Simultaneously, as these storylines brew, Unel stirs in 1952 with the tale of two American sisters studying abroad in Istanbul. One sister (Angela Goethals) more touched by the country and its countrymen than the other.

 

Goethals, who has a long list of professional credits that include "Spanglish," "Jerry Maguire" and the hit television series "24," also plays a harem servant and offers such charm and professional exactitude that it made the play all the more enjoyable to watch.

Performed in the intimate Theatre at Boston Court, the distance, or lack-there-of, between the audience and the cast makes the play feel interactive. And, while the stories play among themselves, often times in the same room, one never gets confused as to where one tale begins and the other ends. This is also giving credit to stage and lighting design, which was void of barriers, but so clearly separated each scene. It does what theater should do by thrusting the audience into living through the characters vicariously and this can only be accomplished by a stellar cast.

 

Director Michael Michetti is cut out for his work. Never did the play falter, slow down or look unpolished and the attention paid on the intricacies of Turkish culture and mannerisms was thoroughly evident. Michetti, who is self-proclaimed as anything by an expert on Turkey or Turks, clearly did his homework and as a result delivered an A-plus show.

California Turkish Times

249 E. Ocean Blvd., Suite 812 Long Beach CA 90802

Tel: (562) 491 1223 - Fax:(562) 491 1227

e-mail: - info@californiaturkishtimes.com www.californiaturkishtimes.com

Copyright 2005 California Turkish Times. All rights reserved.

 

 

 

EYE SPY LA

 

07/28/2005

PERA PALAS AT THE THEATRE @ BOSTON COURT.

 

The size of the new (2004) "Theatre @ Boston Court" exceeds by multiples any other 99-seat theater. The Boston Court's lobby alone could swallow most small theaters. The air conditioning is silent and powerful. There's even leg room. While such extravagant space might distance the impact of a one or two person show, it provided a landscape for The Antaeus Company to put on the twenty-seven character play Pera Palas, which requires staging multiple scenes involving different groups of characters simultaneously. The Antaeus Company should be commended for succeeding in a project beyond the capacity of most small theater companies with a cast that uniformly infuses the characters with lyricism and passion. I must confess I was apprehensive about this play, with its didactic purpose of educating us about modern Turkish history. Fortunately, instead of being written like a documentary on The History Channel, it has the light sentimentality of My Big Fat (Turkish) Wedding. The story of the alliance between America and Turkey in the Cold War in the 1950's is dramatized-you guessed it! -- by a wedding between a Turk and an American.

 

That continuing alliance of the two nations along with relaxed moral standards in the 1990's is dramatized by the long and happy gay partnering of a Turk and an American. Actually, it's probably best not to know anything about Turkish history, or you may be offended. While in real life, the Ottomans, led by the Sultan and various Pashas, sided with Germany in World War I and compounded that debacle by slaughtering the (Christian) Armenians, the play ignores that unpleasantness and portrays life under the Sultanate at the end of World War I as a dream of harem life, unfairly shortened by the British. The whitewashing of history even shows up in the bizarre and careful whiting out in every program of the statement that the Republic of Turkey remains "an Islamic-centered power" – nothing is permitted to detract from the Honk If You Love Turkey! mood of So what of the light side? The author Sinan Unel knows his comedy; the audience had a great time.

 

Under Michael Michetti's lucid direction, it was not all that hard to follow the action, even though set in three different time frames, with ten actors covering almost 30 roles, with different actors playing the same characters at different stages of their lives, and with cross-gender casting for some roles. Perhaps the show does not overly tax the brain because the three stories being told in this sophisticated manner are relatively simple and familiar, namely, (1) Pasha family meets independent minded Englishwoman, like The King and I set in Turkey, (2) the kids from different backgrounds fall in love and get married despite their parents' objections, and (3) the prodigal gay son returns home for a difficult rapprochement with his father.

 

Altogether, Unel has made a clever construction of familiar domestic scenes further leavening a bubbly history lesson. The production is double-cast, meaning different actors perform the roles on different nights.

 

The Theatre @ Boston Court, 70 North Mentor Ave, Pasadena. Thurs, Fri. & Sat. @ 8:00 p.m., Sun. @ 2:00 & 7:00 p.m. Tickets 626-683-6883.

·      Mark Share (mshare@eyespyla.com)

 

 

CALIFORNIA TURKISH TIMES

 

The First Published Turkish Newspaper in California

11 August 2005 Online Edition - Issue:7

An Istanbul hotel brims with an infusion of humanity, tradition and changing times

By Leyla Gulen

 

Sinan Ünel's "Pera Palas" weaves a dense tapestry of life's conflicting threads - tradition and progress - and explores how their shift can rock society so furiously that people's identity can come unraveled in an instant.

 

The play is set at the 114-year-old Pera Palas Hotel in Istanbul, Turkey - the lodging place for such icons as Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and Agatha Christie. In this work, one of the hotel's guest rooms becomes the intersection of cultures, history and personal struggles while simultaneously meshing together three time periods ranging from 1918 to 1994. Adding more vigor to a whirlwind plot, 10 actors are playing 27 roles encompassing Turks, Brits and Americans.

 

"We meet these characters as young, idealistic people and see how time effects them," says Michael Michetti, the play's director. "How living life smacks right in the face of idealism, and we later see them as disillusioned and embittered by it."

 

"Pera Palas" also serves as a quasi-autobiography for the 47- year-old playwright, who first produced, what he regards as his most successful work, six years ago at New York's The Lark Theatre Company.

 

"The play is largely a contrast between a western outlook on life and a Turkish outlook," says Ünel. "I personally feel there was a lot lost when Turkey changed and I think the culture is still evolving.

 

"It's depressing to see the whole materialism, ambition, Botox and all that crap. The way of thinking has changed. Money is the important thing," he continued. Born to an American mother and a Turkish father, Unel moved to Istanbul when he was a year old before returning to the states to attend college as an undergraduate at the University of Kansas and Boston University, where he received his M.A. in playwriting. Ünel, who has since settled in Massachusetts near his sister, says he visits Turkey every couple of years. "I think there's a lot still there and I think Turks have a sense of history and respect for history, respect for friendships and family and humanity where success doesn't always trump values." Through the central character of Murat, Ünel says the play reflects two aspects of his own life and brings them together. "He's an expatriate and gay coming to terms with his family," said Unel.

 

Actor Seamus Dever, who's playing the role of Murat, says learning the role of a man half steeped in American and Turkish traditions, posed a challenge. "I've had to temper a lot of my normal ideas of observing [Turkish] people because I'm playing someone who's been in the United States for nine years. A lot of my mannerisms are somewhere in between," says Dever. In fact, all the actors during their five weeks of rehearsals did exhaustive dramaturgical research. "We brought a lot of Turkish friends in to help talk to us about Turkish culture, take notes when we're doing something inappropriately," says actress Jeanie Hackett, co-artistic director of The Antaeus Company. "There's Turkish language in it, so we've had someone consult us on that as well as a dialect coach to learn how to do a Turkish dialect."

 

Both Michetti and Hackett say they have never come across a play that dealt with Turkey, therefore, "Pera Palas" ventures to crack the theater mold by introducing American audiences to a widely unknown culture and, according to Hackett, sheds light on misconceptions of the country as a whole.

 

"I think most of all, for me, the scope of the play deals with big issues, but in a very human way. It's both personal and dealing with a whole century, a whole culture," says Hackett. "How this abrupt change confused the identity within, becoming somebody new and a country being resurrected."

 

Michetti says the play deals with turn of the century issues that are relevant today. "There are questions asked in the first periods of the play about what is the identity of the country and what is relevant now with the European Union and the question about whether they're European enough to join or whether they're too Muslim, too Eastern to be part of that." He continued, "Here we are almost a hundred years later and we're asking the same questions."

 

Like a particular tapestry that lies in the Pera Palas Hotel today, a gift from an Indian Mahharajah to Atatürk in 1929, which incidentally bore the exact time of his expiration, "Pera Palas" may very well hold the answers to the future for these individuals, as well.

Sinan Ünel is the author of more than 20 plays and was awarded numerous awards for "Pera Palas" including, The John Gassner Memorial Award and was a finalist for the Massachusetts Cultural Council New Plays Grant.

 

"Pera Palas"

Previews run from July 14 through July 22.

Opening nights are July 23 and 24 and runs through August 28.

Shows on Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays

at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.

Tickets: Preview $15, Regular $30

For more information,call (626)683-6883 or visit online www.bostoncourt.org

California Turkish Times

249 E. Ocean Blvd., Suite 812 Long Beach CA 90802

Tel: (562) 491 1223 - Fax:(562) 491 1227

e-mail: - info@californiaturkishtimes.com www.californiaturkishtimes.com

Copyright 2005 California Turkish Times. All rights reserved.

 

 

CURTAIN UP

 

CurtainUp

The Internet Theater Magazine of Reviews, Features, Annotated Listings www.curtainup.com

 

The classics-oriented Antaeus Theatre has made an unusual choice in Sinan Unel's , first produced in New York in 1998. It's consistent, however, with the classical themes the group espouses and also unites it with the new artist-driven Theatre@Boston Court in Pasadena. Their Co-Artistic Director Michael Michetti worked on the play with Antaeus in their Mayfest 2003 workshop festival, resulting in the happy collaboration on Boston Court's sleek modern space under Michetti's direction.

 

The three areas are treated with Tom Buderwitz's colorful scenic design of Turkish rugs, vivid murals, silken cushions and unobtrusive furniture that spans three periods from 1918 to 1994. Ivy Y. Chou's bright graceful costumes are exquisite. The play, whose title is drawn from the Pera Palas luxury hotel in Istanbul, where much of it takes place, begins with English writer Evelyn Crawley who's , starry-eyed about beautiful Turkey and befriends 15-year-old Melek, the daughter of Pasha Ali Riza Efendi. Melek, who has all the ambition of a butterfly, gaily anticipates the wedding her father has arranged for her, despite Evelyn's attempts to turn her into an independent woman. In 1952 Kathy Miller, a young American teacher, is swept away by darkly passionate Orhan, son of Bedia, a servant in Pasha Ali's harem whose marriage was arranged when the Sultan's regime fell and the family could no longer afford to keep her. Orhan is equally idealistic about his career opportunities under the new Republic of Turkey and its friendly ally, the United States. His illusions are dashed by his sister-in-law's husband Joe, a vulgar redneck whose prejudice deprives Orhan of a job. In 1994 Murat, son of Kathy and Orhan, returns to Istanbul with his gay lover Brian. Although his parents welcome them, Murat prods his father into revealing his real feelings about homosexuality, in a metaphor of Turkey's current conflict between progressive elements and Islamic fundamentalism.

 

What saves the play from being a didactic tableau of Turkish history is Unel's gift for vivid characterization and the intensity with which history unfolds through the tortured and passionate eyes of his ten characters. All three stories are told simultaneously but, under Michetti's finely drawn direction, each one is perfectly clear. The climax is a little muddled but that's because in Unel's focus on winding up the three stories so much is happening at once.

 

The Antaeus doublecasts. In the performance viewed, Gigi Bermingham brought force and poise to Evelyn and a world-weary film noir ambiance to Orhan's sister Sema with her modern job and her married lover. Tessa Thompson is enchanting as Melek and Daniel Blinkoff equally delightful as Brian, Oshan's lover. Blinkoff showed his range in an almost unrecognizable second role of the shy repressed Cavid, Melek's brother. Harry Groener projects towering disillusion as the older Orhan, partnered with his real-life wife Dawn Didawick in a delicious performance as Kathy Older, as well as the Pasha's third wife Ayse. Angela Goethals has a standing-on-tiptoe quality as Kathy Miller and also as Bedia, the young odalisque. Seamus Dever, the only actor who has just one role, projects the graven beauty of Murat with an aura of the pain that ultimately erupts. Ramon de Ocampo is a passionate Orhan, Mikael Salazar ranges from dignified power figures to Joe Brown, the caricature of an Okie, and Deborah Puette lends a graceful beauty to the Pasha's first wife Neyime and a gawky grace to Anne Miller.

 

In addition to the three simultaneous plays, Unel has also written the play to be cast with no regard for age or sex. If the intent is to underline the constant presence of time by layering the equal presence of age and sex, it's unnecessary and distracting. In a play that's already stunningly theatrical, this is a distancing affectation. But that's a small quibble in a play so worth doing and well done.

 

Pera Palas

Playwright: Sinan Unel

Director: Michael Michetti

Cast: Gigi Bermingham/Jeanie Hackett (Evelyn Crawley, Sema); Rebecca Mozo/

Tessa Thompson (Melek, Kiraz); John Prosky/Mikael Salazar (Ali Reza, Sir

Robert, Joe Brown, Ipek); Daniel Blinkoff/Bill Brochtrup (Brian/Cavid); Deborah

Puette/Libby West (Neyime, Anne Miller, Osman); Angela Goethals/Tamara

Krinsky (Bedia, Kathy Miller); Dawn Didawick/Melinda Peterson (Ayse, Cavid

Older, Kathy Older); Apollo Dukakis/Harry Groener (Adalet, Bedia Older, Orhan

Older); Ramon De Ocampo/Ogie Zulueta (Orhan, Porter); Daniel Bess/Seamus

Dever (Murat).

Set Design: Tom Buderwitz

Lighting Design: Adam H. Greene

Costume Design: Ivy Y. Chou

Sound Design: Leon Rothenberg

Running Time: Two hours 40 minutes with two intermissions

Running Dates: July 14-August 28, 2005

Where: The Theatre@Boston Court, 70 N. Mentor St., Pasadena, Ph: (626) 683-

6883

 

TALKIN' BROADWAY

 

Los Angeles - "Pera Palas" - 7/27/05

Pera Palas

I wonder what Sinan Unel's Pera Palas would look like if it was played in chronological order. The play's three acts cover three distinct stories in three distinct time periods, yet the stories are not assigned individual acts. Instead, scenes from each of the three stories are alternated throughout the evening, and the three tales unfold more or less simultaneously. Moreover, nearly all of the actors in the play perform multiple roles. An actor with a "leading role" in one story may find himself playing a supporting part in another tale. (This West Coast premiere production, at the Theatre at Boston Court, is double cast. No matter what else is said, getting two casts of ten actors to play more than twenty roles in three different time periods is an impressive accomplishment.)

 

The three stories all begin in the same place - a room in the Pera Palas Hotel in Istanbul. And, although it is not made clear until the second act (but the program gives it away before the play even starts), the characters in the three stories are not wholly unrelated. The first story begins in 1918 and centers on Evelyn, a British journalist who has come to Turkey planning to document her travels, and her friend Melek, a fifteen-year-old Turkish girl who is the daughter of a wealthy Pasha. Although Evelyn is one of those gung-ho English women who wants to experience different cultures, she also cannot quite keep in check her distaste for the lack of rights Turkish women have. Melek lives her days in the harem, and desires nothing more than to marry (in an arranged marriage) and have children. Indeed, the most rebellious thing Melek can conceive of is sneaking out to take a peek at her future husband before they are married.

 

The second tale begins in 1952, long after the gender equality Evelyn hoped for in Turkey has become a reality. This story centers on Kathy, a young American teacher who falls in love with Orhan, a young Turkish man. Their story focuses on their respective families' reactions to their somewhat whirlwind courtship. Kathy's sister tells her to stay

away from the "handsome no-good foreigner," although, in Istanbul, it

is Kathy who is the foreigner.

 

The final story takes place in 1994. Murat has brought his American lover, Brian, back to Istanbul to meet his parents. But Murat has been estranged from his family for years, and he doesn't even have the courage to pick up the phone and tell them he has flown halfway around to world to see them.

 

Just setting forth the skeletal outlines of the three plots, it is easy to see certain plot threads and commonalities. Each story, for instance, addresses the idea of broadening the scope of what was then an acceptable marriage in Turkey. But, more than that, each story considers the evolving roles of women in Turkish society, as well as the evolving relationship between Turks and Westerners. And, because some of the characters are the same from one story to the next, we can see how certain decisions play out in a very personal way. To take just one example, Orhan's parents are not simply some random Turkish couple; his mother was a slave in the harem we saw in Melek's story. It is easier to understand her reluctance to accept Kathy as a daughter-in- law when we know where she's coming from.

 

And yet, much of this understanding is lost because we don't really know that harem slave's story until the end of the third act - after we've already seen her older self disapprove of Kathy. Pera Palas tells all three of its stories roughly simultaneously - which means that the first act sets them all up, the second act moves them all along, and the third act resolves them in a great big flurry of activity. It's almost information overload, as you try to process a key plot development in one story and work out how this might explain something you've seen much earlier in a subsequent story. What's worse is that, for the very first time in the show, the third act contains overlapping dialogue - climactic scenes in two stories unfold at once, and, rather than give you the opportunity to digest what appear to be some very important concepts, the play is off and running in another direction completely as another story takes hold. But these scenes are supposed to be the payoff - they're what you've been sitting here for two and a half hours to get to - and they're given short shrift by having only half the spotlight each.

 

Paradoxically, the play could probably use a little more overlapping dialogue in earlier scenes. While Pera Palas goes to all the trouble of alternating between its three storylines, and risks the possible audience confusion that goes with it, the play doesn't take full advantage of the opportunities such braided storylines allow. Occasionally, people from one storyline will stay onstage (sleeping, for example) while people from another storyline will inhabit the same space, oblivious to the people occupying it at a different time. But there are no obvious connections made - we don't see two people in different time periods sharing the same thought, or even opposite ones. Only briefly do we see the same character share the stage with his older or younger self - yet since the characters are played by different actors at different ages, there is no reason why someone's future counterpart couldn't be there, even just to watch and reflect on his past.

 

The acting is absolutely first rate, with particularly notable performances turned in by Gigi Bermingham as the British adventurer Evelyn, who wants to respect Turkish culture but can't help wanting to fix it just a touch; Daniel Blinkoff as Melek's half brother, who is rather more in favor of women's rights than Melek is, and gives a powerful yet conflicted speech to a group of Turkish women; and Harry Groener, who provides comic relief in some female roles, but then sinks his teeth into some of the best material in the play as Murat's father. Ivy Y. Chou's costumes are exemplary, particularly the opulent harem dresses in the 1918 story (although someone should make certain that, when Melek prostrates herself facing upstage, the audience doesn't see the great big "39" written on the soles of her shoes). Tom Buderwitz's spacious set amply covers all the necessary locales, while its upper level consists of the rough outlines of a cityscape, which is then lit exquisitely by Adam H. Greene. Indeed, once or twice, I found the breathtaking transitions of dawn or sunset to upstage the action taking place beneath them.

 

Pera Palas is a big, beautiful, logistical nightmare of a show, in which epic storytelling techniques ultimately do not manage to put across an epic story.

 

Pera Palas continues at the Theatre at Boston Court through August 28, 2005. For tickets, see www.bostoncourt.com. For schedule of performers, see www.antaeus.org.

 

The Theatre at Boston Court - Artistic Directors Jessica Kubzansky & Michael Michetti; Executive Director Eileen T'Kaye; Producing Director Michael Seel; Managing Director Cheryl Rizzo; Founding Director Z. Clark Branson - and The Antaeus Company - Artistic Directors John Apicella & Jeanie Hackett; Managing Director Holly Harter; Founding Artistic Director Dakin Matthews-present Pera Palas. Written by Sinan Unel; Directed by Michael Michetti. Ensemble: Gigi Bermingham, Daniel Bess, Daniel Blinkoff, Bill Brochtrup, Ramon De Ocampo, Seamus Dever, Dawn Didawick, Apollo Dukakis, Angela Goethals, Harry Groener, Jeanie Hackett, Tamara Krinsky, Rebecca Mozo, Melinda Peterson, John Prosky, Deborah Puette, Mikael Salazar, Tessa Thompson, Libby West, and Ogie Zulueta. Scenic Design Tom Buderwitz; Lighting Design Adam H. Greene; Costume Design Ivy Y. Chou; Sound Design Leon Rothenberg; Properties Design Chuck Olsen; Assistant Director Suzanne Karpinski; Dialect Coach Sarah Hartmann; Production Stage Manager Young Ji; Publicist Aldrich & Associates and Betty PR.

- Sharon Perlmutter

[ © 1997 - 2005 TalkinBroadway.com, a project of www.TalkinBroadway.Org, Inc. ]

 

 

BLOG CRITICS

 

Pera Palas: Finding a Community, Defining Westernization

Posted by Purple Tigress on July 23, 2005 12:09 AM (See all posts by Purple Tigress)

Release date: 07 June, 2005

 

When you hear the phrase "Orient Express" images of West meeting East, murder, intrigue and wealthy, distinguished or adventurous travelers arise. This, of course, is mostly due to Agatha Christie's "Murder on the Orient Express," which she wrote while staying at the famed Pera Palas, a hotel in Istanbul.

 

Sinan Unel's play, "Pera Palas," which opens on July 23 at the Boston Court as a co-production with the Antaeus Company, sets the main action at the hotel and follows the lives of a Turkish family through three generations. The play has won several awards, including a Massachusetts Cultural Council New Plays Grant. In a recent telephone interview, Unel, who grew up in Turkey, said, "The play is really about the exchange between the Muslim Eastern culture of Turkey and the West, how Turkey, over the course of a few decades, went from being a Muslim empire to a modern democracy."

 

His play basically breaks into three different stories about foreign travelers-an English woman writer, Evelyn, in 1918-1924; an American woman teacher, Kathy, who reaches Istanbul in 1952 and a gay man, Murat, who is half-Turkish.

 

He wrote the play because he found and still finds many misconceptions about his country. These "are more from a lack of information, assumptions like Turks are Arabs." Part of the transition that Turkey made in the 20^th century was the emancipation of women, which is why he chose two female protagonists. The third, a gay man, was more personal because Unel is gay and he finds that "in many areas, Turkey is not as evolved as America or European countries on the gay issue."

 

The play was performed off-Broadway in 1999 where Jeanie Hackett, The Antaeus Company co-artistic director, saw it. Two years ago her company did a workshop on the piece. Michael Michetti, co-artistic director of The Theatre @ Boston Court, directed. During a rehearsal break, Hackett, Melinda Peterson, Deborah Puette and Michetti explained their learning processes.

 

Says Michetti, "We needed to honor all of the various aspects of it- its comedic aspects, its farcical aspects, its dramatic aspects and somehow not homogenize them...to make them all feel that they can exist in the same world...trying to keep it rooted in the truth." During the first weeks of rehearsal, Unel helped Michetti and cast with some cultural questions.

 

Michetti explained, "It was very important to me that we represent the culture accurately. In the West, in general, in both Europe and America, there's a very long history of inappropriate Orientalism-generalizing anything of the east with broad strokes....Certainly having Sinan here was hugely valuable. We also made a number of friends in the Turkish-American community." These friends were resources that literally came to them unexpectedly. Hackett said, "We had a listing (for the workshop) in the paper and the Turkish people actually found us. On our second night-we had four nights scheduled-the phone was ringing off the hook. ...We added two extra performances and were completely packed. Turkish people were coming back stage. We didn't have the time to do the research then.

 

"They would come backstage in tears after the play. ...I think I know more now why it moved them," Hackett explained. "There was a profound cultural shift. There's a line in the play: We did not become the people we thought we would become. I think there's a sense of loss. The country somehow had to move and is still moving into a Western democracy, but the loss of the magnificence of the culture that existed for 500 years, that was gone in almost an instant," resulted in a melancholy that characterizes Istanbulis. Peterson said, "It has a lot to do with change, not only personal change, but cultural change."

 

"Change is loss, " Hackett said. "Who you are becoming is what this play is about, as a person and as a country." The play also reaches beyond Turkey. Puette said, "It also addresses the universality of what constitutes a home....Jeanie's character says, ‘A harem is a home just like any home.' In the course of watching the play you find that it is actually true. ...It humanizes a culture that we know very little about." Hackett added, "But here's one misconception that was kind of universal, that the pasha, the sultan had an orgy every night.... (In

reality) each wife is treated with respect.... It is not an amoral system. ... it can function in a human and humane way." "The cultural rules," Peterson explained, "...made sense and made the system work."

 

This West Coast premiere will be more lavish than previous productions and even previous Antaeus Company productions as well. Michetti worked with the company's traditional double casting and guided some guest actors who were brought in weren't used to that. Michetti trusts the instincts of the actors and allows for slight variances between actors so no performance will be exactly the same.

 

Unel noted, that in London the play was "seen more in terms of a political play," but for Unel, the play isn't at all political. Yet there is a timely political aspect to this play as Michetti noted, "The question about its Westernness is on the table now with Turkey's attempt to join the European Union....Is it Western enough to join the European Union? She (Evelyn) asks this in 1924; here we are 81 years later essentially asking the same question.

 

--Originally published in The Pasadena Weekly

 

 

WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE

 

Pera Palas, written by Sinan Unel, directed by Michael Michetti

Orientalism exploded

Pera Palas, written by Sinan Unel, directed by Michael Michetti

By Richard Adams

4 August 2005

Pera Palas, written by Sinan Unel, directed by Michael Michetti.

Co-produced by the Antaeus Company and The Theatre at Boston

Court. Boston Court Theatre, Pasadena, California. West Coast

premiere. July 23-August 28, 2005.

 

Beyond the lovers quarrels, intra-family feuds, near-farcical entrances, and (tasteful) bathroom jokes, Sinan Unel's Pera Palas is a play about self-identity. The play attempts to address what it means to be Turkish, English, American, a father, a son, a sister, a wife, gay, modern, emancipated, traditional, secular, Islamic, addicted or even infertile. Given such an ambitious menu of identifiers, the wonder of it all is that Pera Palas doesn't disintegrate into a soapy cavalcade. Rather, this play wrestles intelligently with something that has plagued the educated classes of certain "developing" nations-Orientalism and its many hand- maidens.

 

Orientalism, in its most familiar form, is a habit of mind indulged by colonialists and imperialists that essentializes the other as exotic and unbridgeably alien. Think of how generalities about Iraq and its people or Islam in general are bandied about by self-appointed experts. These pronouncements are typically uttered with the same self-serving smugness with which some pontificate about, say, Merlot. Orientalism, however, becomes problematic when those under colonial or neo-imperial sway-be they Turkish, Asian, Iraqi Arab, Latin, African-internalize the imperial culture's tropes, deferring to the imagined superiority of its values, and suppressing or rejecting their own in the name of modernization or progress. While Orientalism in its varied manifestations is very much on the minds of playwright Sinan Unel and his characters, Orientalism is chiefly a concern to those sufficiently and self-consciously cosmopolitan to be aggrandized or aggrieved in these games of cultural one-upsmanship. (For an extended critique of Edward Said, the radical expatriate Palestinian whose 1978 book Orientalism made the term a commonplace in academic/intellectual circles, see David Walsh's article at www.wsws.org/arts/1993/sep1993/said- s13.shtml.)

 

Set in Istanbul, Pera Palas (the name of a famous old international hotel) focuses on three defining moments of Turkish social, cultural, and political history: 1918-1924 (the end of World War I to the birth of the Republic); 1952-1953 (the height of American influence); and 1994 (when an Islamic revival challenged 70 years of official secularism). Constantinople/Istanbul-its double name indicative of its bipolarity-is the East-West's border town. The Bosporus has often been identified as the place where Asia and Europe collide. Each period treated in this play marks a major collision.

 

In the first, with the European powers carving up the former Ottoman Empire, the principal foreign players were French and British. It was a time when French became the preferred language of Istanbul's elite. Even as women's suffrage and emancipation were stirring in the West, young Turkish women were still being relegated to the harem. The primary relationship in this stratum of the play is that of Evelyn Crawley (Jeanie Hackett), a self- consciously progressive Englishwoman, and Melek (Rebecca Mozo/Tessa Thompson), her devoted young Turkish friend. The sociologically inclined Miss Crawley is invited to observe first-hand the secret sisterhood of the harem. She struggles to suspend judgment on its mores, pushing herself to accept the customs of the household on its own terms. She ultimately fails. She rails against Melek and both the British ambassador and Melek's father (a Pasha and Turkish diplomat). The Pasha's earlier deference to Evelyn, as embodiment of all things modern and British (in stark contrast to his casual disrespect for his wives, daughter, and feminist son), makes him a poster-boy for the pitfalls of Orientalism. His suicide coincides with the fall of the Sultanate and the collapse of his world of privilege. In the second period (the early 1950s), the post-war influence of the United States finds expression in the tale of two sisters from Ohio who teach at the American school in Istanbul. The younger sister (Angela Goethels/Tamara Krinsky) is hungry to break out of the cloistered life of the school. She falls in love with Orhan (Ramon de Ocampo), a handsome, charming young Turk, the only son of a well-off, well-connected Turkish family. His dark intensity coupled with her gleaming blonde lightness epitomize a familiar Western fantasy/fear of miscegenation. Their naïve faith in love's power to conquer all slams up against the prejudices of both Orhan's and Kathy's families. Separated by language, customs, tastes, and religion, problems in the marriage appear early when Orhan-in love with all things American-is summarily rejected by an American oil company for a job. He knows that he's been rejected because he's Turkish, and he learns that imperial America is not and never will be his friend. Internalizing his disillusionment, Orhan takes out his frustration on his wife and begins to self- medicate with booze, cigarettes, and solipsistic rants (habits that ferment for 40 years).

 

The play's last period, 1994, finds Murat, the son of Orhan and Kathy, having just returned to Istanbul with Brian, his American lover of eight years-an echo of the Kathy-Orhan "mixed marriage." Murat avoids contact with his family, but Brian, taking matters into his own hands, contacts Murat's sister, Sema, a full- bore modern woman, a tough no-nonsense attorney, with secrets of her own (she's addicted to some Turkish Valium-substitute, and she's been involved with a married man for 10 years). Brian is intoxicated with the exoticism of this place, yet afraid to fully experience it; his first brush with the local cuisine (roasted lamb intestines) is the source of the play's litany of bathroom jokes. Brian is, in some ways, the consummate vacationer, eager to sample the exotic yet unwilling to give up his homeland's habits (and prejudices). And Murat is a classic returnee, a prodigal reshaped by his years in New York, encountering his native city with fresh eyes, alien values, and old memories. All three time periods coexist on stage with scenes from each period playing simultaneously, intercutting and literally crossing through each other. Ten actors play 27 roles. Three of these "doublings" offer such resonance that, had they been separately cast, powerful parallels and contrasts would have been lost. Other "doublings," however, feel as if they are simply a way of reducing the cast size.

As Evelyn Crawley and Sema Bayraktar, Jeannie Hackett gives a tour de force portrait of two women separated by nearly a century. (One can only imagine the backstage frenzy of her many quick coif and costume changes.) Each in her own way is independent, strong- willed, sharply opinionated, yet still struggling against expectations of gender. Crawley tiptoes at the edge of "going native." Sema has stepped into the neverland between two cultures, wearing her Western manner like a well-fitted mask. Each blasts away at the hypocrisies of her native culture. Ms. Hackett manages to reveal both the similarities and differences between Crawley and Sema, allowing us to see and feel the unrelenting pressures of being an independent woman confronting vested patriarchies while experimenting with the freedom of adopting a multicultural identity.

 

As Cavid, the neglected and scorned son of the Pasha's first, and subsequently neglected wife, Bill Brochtrup captures the pathos of a lost soul, damaged by the harem system, who finds his voice as a feminist firebrand even while holding these submissive veiled women in contempt. Like early twentieth century Turkey's privileged classes, Cavid is lost in the limbo between an idealized (and highly selective) Western (i.e., modern) paradise and the inescapable residue of his own history. While Mr. Brochtrup's Brian is marred by too overt (in my opinion) gay mannerisms, they do get laughs, but often at the expense of subtlety. Nevertheless, Mr. Brochtrup manages to suggest that, under different circumstances, Cavid and Brian could be very much the same, each superficially eager to sample the cultural values of "the other," yet unwilling to fully embrace or understand them. The doubling of Ali Reza (the Pasha, Melek and Cavid's father, a diplomat representing the last Sultan) and Joe Brown (Kathy Miller Bayraktar's bluntly parochial brother-in-law, an American oil exec) suggests just how similar these two roles are in their respective worlds. These are the kind of men who do the bidding of their political masters, who unthinkingly repeat the nostrums of their own respective cultures. Mikael Salazar sharply distinguishes the two roles through sheer physicality. The doubling of Apollo Dukakis as an odalisque of the harem (1918) and as Orhan's mother (1952), however, pushes the envelope of high camp, making what should be an emotionally important scene into a drag sketch. Likewise, the use of certain women as men draws too much attention to the choice, seriously distracting us from the content of the scenes. In sharp contrast to his "drag" scenes, Mr. Dukakis's portrait of the older (1994) Orhan is so rich, nuanced, and by turns poignant and bombastic that it stands out in this universally superb cast. He manages to reveal volumes in simple actions, the small specificities that evoke an entire life, a world in a gesture. The masterful writing, acting, and staging of this climactic scene in which the prodigal son returns create a kind of perfect storm of every contradiction in the 80 years of Turkish cultural history embraced by this piece.

 

The set by Tom Buderwitz is a brilliant work of constructivist art, a Rauschenberg-like construction some 30 feet high and 90 wide, a totemic grab bag of Turkey in the Twentieth Century. Sadly, it's less successful as a playing area.

 

Director Michael Michetti does a masterful job of choreography. The scenes that need to tear at us, do; those that need to make us laugh, also do. His staging, however, is somewhat limited by restricting portions of the set to specific locations. It's as if the entire stage has been turned into a soundstage, with different sections camera-blocked to hide adjacent sets. With lighting often generalized, this sometimes leaves the actors floating in some vaguely "exotic" space, their little playing areas dwarfed by the constructivist collage. We suspect that this show was overproduced. Some roughness might have (counter-intuitively) enhanced the experience.

 

This is a play that works on its audience through juxtapositions (both ironic and evocative) and parallelisms that remind us that questions of self-identity in a shifting world are and will always be with us. That its characters wrestle with what they love and what they hate about the West and about themselves is what gives this work a satisfying depth and breadth.

 

No single play, even one as ambitious as Pera Palas, can hope to capture the full complexity of a region as turbulent as twentieth century Turkey. Regional historical events are referred to, but they generally serve as fleeting historical markers and contextual backdrop (just as the set serves as an iconic collage). Significantly, many are ignored completely: the contradictory nature of the Kemalist revolution, including the 1921 extermination of Turkey's nascent Communist Party; the U.S.-backed military coup of 1980; and the genocidal campaigns against Armenians and Kurds. Absent too are the political purges, the mafia-like corruption, the fascistic Grey Wolves, and the Kemalist hijacking of Islam for nationalist ends. (For more on twentieth century Turkey, see the numerous articles by Justus Leicht in the archives of this site, and in particular Mr. Leicht's critical overview of the Turkish Republic's 75-year history at www.wsws.org/history/1998/nov1998/turk- n17.shtml.)

 

The play's view of class is similarly restricted. Only three servants appear-a bellhop, a handmaid of the harem, and a household cook. All are subservient. One is left to wonder what they make of their self-absorbed "masters." The tens of millions of Turkish peasants and workers remain invisible, hidden behind the walls of the Pera Palas hotel, Melek's harem, and the Bayraktar household.

 

The hotel itself, perhaps intentionally, serves as a kind of cocoon from which its temporary residents are cosseted from the roiling streets outside. With this play, the Pera Palas takes its place alongside such hotels as Saigon's Intercontinental or the Baghdad Hilton, famous for their guest books, infamous for the imperialist ambitions nurtured in their rooms.

 

Pera Palas offers insight into the dangers of ethnic stereotyping and the pathologies of Orientalism. Even though it focuses on the tribulations of the bourgeois elite, it still forces us to examine the uncritical acceptance of the kinds of generalities that provide the foundations on which imperial adventures are mounted and on which occupying armies depend, the kind of national prejudices that smother international consciousness. While Pera Palas may on the surface appear as a period play and a sometimes soapy family saga, it is the kind of relevant, challenging work of theater that, given its onerous production demands, is rarely seen. More's the pity.

 

Copyright 1998-2005

World Socialist Web Site

All rights reserved

 

 

VARIETY

 

Pera Palas

(Theater@Boston Court; 99 seats; $30 top)

A Theater@Boston Court and Antaeus Company presentation of a play in three acts by Sinan Unel. Directed by Michael Michetti.

Evelyn Crawley, Sema - Jeanie Hackett

Melek, Kiraz - Rebecca Mozo

Ali Reza, Sir Robert, Joe Brown, Ipek - Mikael Salazar

Brian, Cavid - Bill Brochtrup

Neyime, Anne Miller, Osman - Deborah Puette

Bedia, Kathy Miller - Angela Goethals

Ayse, Cavid Older, Kathy Older - Melinda Peterson

Adalet, Bedia Older, Orhan Older - Apollo Dukakis

Orhan, Porter - Ramon De Ocampo

Murat - Daniel Bess

By JOEL HIRSCHHORN

 

A complex, multicharacter, multiplot canvas like "Pera Palas" requires confident, cohesive direction, and the Theater@Boston Court version of Sinan Unel's 1999 Off Broadway drama comes sweepingly to life under Michael Michetti's dynamic directorial hand. In this first co-production between Boston Court and the Antaeus Company, Michetti guides 10 actors playing 27 roles, weaves stories from different time periods (1918-24, 1952-53 and 1994), often simultaneously, and maintains complete clarity and focus.

 

English journalist Evelyn Crawley (Jeanie Hackett) appears as a spokeswoman for women's rights, befriending Melek (Rebecca Mozo), a beautiful 15-year- old Turkish girl who rejects worldly ideas and cheerfully embraces the prospect of an arranged marriage. When Evelyn accepts Melek's invitation to live in her home and experience life in a harem, the contrast between her modern British views and Melek's bubblingly radiant naivete is intriguing, especially after it becomes clear that Evelyn's well-meaning interference may promote more problems than it solves. A key conflict set in the ‘90s involves gay men Murat (Daniel Bess), who fled Turkey years earlier after his father denounced him for homosexuality, and Brian (Bill Brochtrup), a more lighthearted personality. He tries to instigate Murat's reconciliation with his aging parents while suffering "Turkish tummy" from unfamiliar food such as intestines and "ram's eggs."

 

Kathy (Angela Goethals) completes the main plot scheme as a 1950s American woman infatuated with charming, seemingly progressive Orhan (Ramon De Ocampo). Although her plans to marry him are opposed by her skeptical sister, Anne (Deborah Puette), she plunges ahead, later discovering her Prince Charming is a violent alcoholic.

 

Certain characters and situations inevitably make a stronger impression than others, and there's occasional frustration when compelling scenes are clipped short to accommodate other, less gripping confrontations. This is particularly true toward the end, when the production seeks to resolve its issues and dashes through moments that deserve more attention.

 

Fortunately, superlative portrayals keep interest from flagging. Melinda Peterson is magnificent as the older, 1990s Kathy, still married to angry, abusive Orhan and, surprisingly, revealed as Murat's mother. Peterson shows all the pain of a wife who has learned to live with her compromises, struggling to keep the peace when Murat brings Brian to dinner and prods his father into admitting he still harbors hostility about his son's choices. This scene has an explosive, Arthur Miller drive, and Apollo Dukakis tears the stage apart as a man fighting to heal old wounds yet still inextricably tangled in his bitterness. Hackett's range is strikingly displayed in her two contrasting roles: as the soberly concerned Evelyn and Murat's edgy sister Sema. A measure of Hackett's achievement is her ability to be cerebral in her British part yet cuttingly harsh as a woman who identifies with her brother's need for his own sexual lifestyle because she, too, has a secret long withheld from her mother and father.

 

Brochtrup brings magnetism and welcome, effervescent humor to a part that could use more definition, and he's touchingly tortured as Cavid, a young man shattered by his mother's heartbreak when her husband casts her aside for another wife.

 

Bess, the only actor handling one role, is a powerful Murat, intensely believable in his desire for the paternal approval he can never truly gain.

 

Some of the best portrayals are in smaller parts. Mikael Salazar is remarkable as Joe, a Turk-hating Midwestern hick who loves baseball and hot dogs, and impressively dignified as Ali Reza, a potentate with many wives who is destroyed by cultural change. Salazar also excels as a condescending embassy rep.

 

Tom Buderwitz's superb set enhances the epic feeling of the piece, filling the stage with hotel room, lush palace and small apartment. Buderwitz's detail -- Turkish tile lining walls and steps, silhouetted skyline of the minarets and domes of Turkey on the upper balcony, huge pictures of Turkish royalty and the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk -- is masterful. Adam H. Greene's lighting and Ivy Y. Chou's costumes add authenticity to a show that projects dimension and grandeur while preserving a sense of subtle emotional intimacy throughout.

Sets, Tom Buderwitz; lighting, Adam H. Greene; costumes, Ivy Y. Chou; sound, Leon Rothenberg; production stage manager, Young Ji. Opened, reviewed July 23, 2005. Runs through Aug. 28. Running time: 2 HOURS, 40 MIN.

Date in print: Wed., Jul. 27, 2005, Los Angeles

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LA WEEKLY

 

Orhan rising - a few years before bad teeth and a boil on his buttock

by STEVEN LEIGH MORRIS

 

Sinan Ünel is an expat Turkish playwright who named his 1998 drama, Pera Palas, after Istanbul's most distinguished hotel - where most of the play's action occurs - a symbolic and luxurious edifice opened in 1891 to accommodate passengers from Paris arriving at the final stop of the Orient Express.

 

The hotel's guest list has included European royalty, Agatha Christie, Jackie O. and the father of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. It's rumored that the constitutional tenets of contemporary Turkey were drawn up in Room 101, where Atatürk secretly resided when his family was under surveillance by the Allied forces of World War I. The place is swirling with ghosts, as is Ünel's play. Pera Palas is Ünel's homage to Istanbul - a city with a pair of bridges connecting Europe to Asia. Those passages between West and East form the crux of Ünel's epic, in the collisions of more than two dozen characters, spanning 75 years, and played here by an ensemble of 10, doubling and tripling roles. Additionally, the entire project - a joint venture of Antaeus Company and the Theater @ Boston Court - has two completely different casts that alternate.

 

The play has three acts and follows three stories, each set decades apart. The first concerns an ideological disciple of Susan B. Anthony, an English suffragette named Evelyn Crawley (Jeanie Hackett) who, in the play's opening, revisits the hotel in 1918 after an absence of several years. World War I rages, and the Ottoman Empire, with its sultan and sanctified bigamy, is in retreat. For emotional as well as anthropological reasons, Evelyn leaves the plush hotel confines for plush harem confines, to dwell among many women with a young Turk named Melek (Rebecca Mozo), who's giddy with excitement over her pending arranged marriage. When a gently pompous British Embassy official (Mikael Salazar) warns Evelyn that, since the Allies are in the process of carving up the Ottoman Empire, it might behoove her to live somewhere more protected from the beastly natives, Evelyn responds with an indignant lecture on British arrogance, which is true but annoying, mainly because she uses the same defensive tone of doe-eyed rectitude later mastered by Tony Blair. She similarly lectures Melek that arranged marriages are fraught with peril, as though unarranged marriages aren't - except that one can now get out of them, which is really the issue. By 1926, Melek has been beaten and isolated in a palace cell for being barren, while her beloved has moved on to another wife. Wedlock is the perfect word for Melek's imprisonment.

 

A story thread from 1952-1953 - a showcase moment for Atatürk's new liberalized Republic - introduces us to a courtship between an American teacher tourist named Kathy (Angela Goethals) and the dashing young Turk, Orhan (Ramon de Ocampo), for whom she abandons her life in the United States. Bad move.

 

The third installment lands us in 1994, a time when Islamic fundamentalism is again on the rise, and where a young expat Turkish photographer (Daniel Bess) returns home from America to introduce his parents - none other than Kathy and Orhan 30 years later (Melinda Peterson and Apollo Dukakis) - to his lover, Brian (Bill Brochtrup). Because Kathy is now convicted to live with Orhan's debts, his infected boils and bad teeth, she's glad to see her son return home; Peterson portrays her with a tenderly cheerful resignation. Dukakis' aging Orhan has a wonderful double-act of feigning good cheer while studiously avoiding eye-contact with his gay son. In such details, Ünel captures the essence of an Eastern country that appears to embrace Western change while actually defying it. The melodramatic father-son confrontation that follows is almost beside the point, an overcompensation for the lack of character detail that would have made this good play a great one. For as a central player, Murat does little more than brood, until he finally unloads on his father. His lover, Brian, is a good- natured queen with an upset stomach. Beyond that, he's barely tested, dramatically. Poor Melek is defined entirely by the men who surround her - her devotion or her victimization. Without them, she's a shell, even though her plight is daunting. Evelyn reads to us from her eloquent diary and supplies plenty of heroic attitude. She's a feminist, for certain, but who she is behind the barricade of her principles is anybody's guess. And that really is the test of a stage character: a creation with a l:ife beyond the walls of the theater. Only Kathy and Orhan rise to that standard, largely because we actually see their collapse from youthful exuberance - and each has the benefit of being played by two actors.

 

The play nonetheless contains a sweeping beauty that's nicely painted by director Michael Michetti, and further enhanced by set designer Tom Buderwitz's collage of images, including emblematic Blue Mosque tiles and the McDonald's logo beneath minarets in the dawn. Furthermore, Ünel brings the three eras together on the stage simultaneously - defined largely by Ivy Y. Chou's excellent costumes. Young Kathy and older Kathy occupy the same stage space, even with Evelyn for a moment - all oblivious to each other. The effect is literally haunting and not just schematic gimmickry. The same impact can be felt inside Istanbul's Hagia Sophia Mosque, where the ghost traces of medieval Christian iconography on the walls still loom in the presence of the Muslim symbols painted over them. Turkey is a land where cultures and religions and epochs all crash into each other. Even with its pedantic streaks, Ünel's play gets to the heart of those implosions, and that's no small accomplishment.

PERA PALAS | By SINAN ÜNEL | Presented by ANTAEUS

COMPANY and THEATER @ BOSTON COURT, 70 N. Mentor

Ave., Pasadena | Through August 28 | (626) 683-6883 or

www.bostoncourttheatre.com.

 

 

BACK STAGE WEST

 

08/30/2005 09:01 AMPera Palas

" Pera Palas"

presented by the Theatre@Boston Court and the Antaeus Company at the Theatre@Boston Court,

70 N. Mentor Ave., Pasadena. Thu.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2 & 7 p.m. Jul. 23-Aug. 28. $30. (626) 683-6883.

Southern CA July 28, 2005

Pera Palas

Reviewed By Melinda Schupmann

 

Sinan Unel's play might be best to see three times. The first would be to admire at length the iconographic historical and social links Tom Buderwitz incorporates into his artistically elegant set. Its Byzantine religious mosaic, commanding figure of Ataturk, Turkish landmarks, nod to the Orient Express, and even the familiar golden arches of McDonald's span the time period of the production: post-World War I, the 1950s, and the present.

 

As scenes unfold, each image visually augments the playwright's dialogue. The second and third visits would be to see the 10 actors playing 26 nongender-specific roles, a collaboration between the Antaeus Company and the Theatre@ Boston Court. With an impressive cast on opening night, it could only be hoped any visit would provide the same solid teamwork. The setting is the Pera Palas Hotel in Istanbul, once frequented by kings and distinguished travelers on the Orient Express, notably Agatha Christie and Jacqueline Kennedy.

 

Unel's story is an intricate web of overlapping characters and personal dilemmas from each period. One thread concerns an English woman (Jeanie Hackett) whose stay in a pasha's harem at the fall of the Ottoman Empire leads her to champion independence for women. Another views the evolution of an American woman's marriage to a Turk (Deborah Puette, Ramon De Ocampo). The third observes a gay man and his lover (Daniel Bess, Bill Brochtrup) meeting his family after a long estrangement over his homosexuality.

 

The ensemble is rounded out by Apollo Dukakis, Melinda Peterson, Angela Goethals, Mikael Salazar, and Rebecca Mozo.

 

The script's overlapping stories-laced with humor, anger, and pathos-are engrossing. Director Michael Michetti humanizes the polemic to great effect, though some characters border on caricature. Brochtrup suffers from an effete flamboyancy and the tourist complaint for much longer than necessary, but he is very affecting as the pasha's son. Mozo is outstanding as the pasha's optimistic daughter waiting to be married, and Hackett's feminist idealism seems palpably real. The generously built Dukakis is worth a giggle as a harem wife and as the mother of the Turkish bridegroom.

 

The production values, several fine performances, and ambitious storytelling by the playwright elevate this multithemed exploration beyond the ordinary. Though flawed, its risks pay off with clever theatricality and intellectual stimulation.

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FRONTIERS

 

Capsule summary for "Pera Palas"

"Pera Palas" is a famous Instanbul hotel, and the title of Sinan Unel's kaleidoscopic play, providing a glimpse at three generations of Turkish history, coming info conflict with the vastly different Western World culture. It's a gorgeous, sweeping epic told in hilarious and heartbreakingly humane terms. At the Theatre@Boston Court in Pasadena through Aug. 28. $30. 626/683-6883.

 

Pera Palas

Theatre@Boston Court

Through Aug. 28

It's quite unusual to encounter a production that so richly and robustly captures the mystique and beauty of a particular ethnic culture as director Michael Michetti's staging of Sinan Unel's epic seriocomic play Pera Palas. The playwright spins an engrossing tale of three generations of Turkish people and the challenges they face as the crumbled Ottoman Empire attempts to assimilate with American and European cultures. Ten actors play 27 roles, and all are double-cast in three overlapping stories that take place in 1918-1924, 1952-1953, and in 1994, with the Turkish hotel of the title serving as a pivotal setting. Oppression of women, attitudes toward homosexuality, and myriad other issues-both timely and timeless-are explored. Though the complex narrative is sometimes confusing, the ravishing production values and consummate performances result in a deeply moving and humorous reflection on life's joys and sorrows. This two-year old professional theatre does itself proud with this shimmering production. – Les Spindle

 

 

LOS ANGELES TIMES

 

Pre-9/11 play helps explain post-9/11 world

Transformation and dislocation are powerful themes in Sinan Ünel's sweeping "Pera Palas."

By Philip Brandes

Special to The Times

July 29, 2005

In the last hundred years, Turkey has traveled farther along the convulsive path from a static, autocratic ancient society to a modern republic than any other country in the Islamic world. The heavy price of transformation its people paid - and the ongoing clash of civilizations that leaves their future precariously in doubt - are eloquently illuminated in Sinan Ünel's "Pera Palas" at Pasadena's Boston Court Theatre.

 

From our initial immersion into the visual opulence of the Istanbul hotel environs of the play's title, Michael Michetti's staging impressively integrates the resident Theatre @ Boston Court's first-rate venue and production values with the Antaeus Company's signature classical performance precision.

 

First produced in 1997, Ünel's sweeping multigenerational drama is an atypically modern project for Antaeus, but its historical roots run deep. More important, the play proves remarkably prescient in identifying the cultural, religious and political issues that beget the lack of understanding and mistrust in our post-9/11 world.

 

This monumental double-cast production features 10 actors in 27 roles representing various nationalities - and, in some cases, cross-gender casting - in three interlocking and overlapping dramas spanning pivotal periods during the 20^th century. In one, set amid the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I, a well-intentioned crusading English feminist (Gigi Bermingham, Jeanie Hackett) undermines the centuries-old subjugation of women in a traditional household only to leave chaos in its wake.

 

A 1950s story line traces a cross-cultural romance between an American teacher (Tamara Krinsky, Angela Goethals) and a charismatic Turk (Ogie Zulueta, Ramon de Ocampo) as the dearly bought democracy joins NATO in a spirit of cautious hope for rapprochement with the West.

 

In the 1990s, when a Turkish expatriate photographer (Seamus Deaver, Daniel Bess) brings his lover (Daniel Blinkoff, Bill Brochtrup) to meet his estranged family, optimism has given way to disillusionment and the dangerous resurgence of religious fundamentalism. Common characters link the three scenes, played by different actors at different stages of life, and the flaws that divide them remain tragically resistant to progress.

 

Ünel is far too talented a playwright to settle for a mere history lesson. Rather than presenting the stories in chronological order, he overlays them in alter-nating sequences within each act. In addition to showcasing blocking ingenuity and the performers' versatility (not to mention driving the audience crazy trying to keep the characters and their relationships straight), this dizzying narrative deconstruction evokes the dislocation of an entire people - a powerful interpenetration of form and theme.