Theatre 2024: The Wrong Bashir

To say that the majority of the plays in the 2023/24 season at Crow’s Theatre have been serious, dramatic, and sometimes extremely intense would be putting it mildly.  As part of this season, we watched a gripping play detailing horrific stories from the 2014 Russian-Ukraine war in Crimea and a fascinating verbatim play that describes the ordeal endured by a female chaplain who was kidnapped and tortured by a Neo-Nazi mental patient.  Even the lighter works included the frustrations and disappointments of a failed attempt to create Sidewalk Labs in Toronto, and a musical based on a small segment of the tome War and Peace that featured a suicide attempt.

While these were all excellent, well-acted and well-staged plays, it was still a breath of fresh air to finally get to see a comedy as the last show of the current season.  My husband Rich and I look to the theatre-going experience as a way to find escape and relief from all the turmoil going on in the world and welcome the opportunity to just laugh and be entertained.  I hope there will be more comedies (or “happy plays” as I like to call them) in the next season.

The Wrong Bashir is a farce by first-time playwright Zahida Rahemtualla, following that old literary doctrine “write about what you know”.  Reflecting her own heritage and culture, The Wrong Bashir deals with a multi-generational Ismaili family and the generational and cultural gaps that they face when interacting with one another.  Having grown up in Canada, the children Bashir and Nafisa are thoroughly westernized, while their parents Sultan and Najma, and grandparents (Dadapapa/Dadima) emigrated as adults and are much more traditional in their views and religious beliefs.

Photo from Crow's Theatre - Dahlia Katz

Bashir Ladha studied philosophy in university and has nihilistic views of the world which he wants to share via podcasts that he creates and attempts to play at coffee shops.  He recently moved back home since he has run out of money. His parents view his endeavours as aimless and worry that he is not involved in the Ismaili community and does not attend Khana where Ismailis gather to worship.   They are therefore thrilled to learn that their son was nominated to serve a prestigious religious position, totally ignoring the obvious fact that he does not qualify and therefore it must be a mistake.  The audience is on the joke right from the start given that the title of the play is “The Wrong Bashir”.  The antics caused by the mistaken identity ramp up as two council representatives, Al Nashir and Mansour, arrive to meet their chosen candidate and are perplexed by who they find.  As they try to reconcile the listed qualities and qualifications that led them to choose their nominee, Najma valiantly and comically tries to justify why her son would fit the bill.  The situation gets more fraught with the arrival of Bashir’s grandparents and gossipy family friend Gulzar, who heard the news through the grapevine.

The stage is set up in such a way that most of the home is visible in a linear fashion, so that you can see the living room, kitchen, dining area and hallway/front entrance all at once. This allowed for the conspiratory movement of groups of characters between the different spaces to find privacy in order to confer and strategize, eliciting the feeling of a door-slamming farce without the actual door-slamming. By the end of the first act, the two hapless councillors have realized that there are two people named Bashir Ladha in their Ismaili community and they are in the home of the wrong one.  But how to rectify the mistake without disappointing and dashing the hopes of this family?  And when Bashir finds out about the error, he is all for turning down the gig.

The mistaken identity trope produced the expected comedic scenarios.  But there was an entire extra layer of humour that catered directly to Ismaili or at least Muslim audience members who recognized gags about their customs and traditions.  In fact, some of the dialogue was actually spoken in a language native to the Ismaili but incomprehensible to those not of the culture.  In our sold-out show, which had a significant Ismaili representation in the audience, there was loud roaring laughter at dialogue or situations that did not land as well with the part of the audience who could not relate to the inside jokes.  It did not help that the sound did not travel well to the back of the theatre where we sat, making me miss the details of an important joke.  When the councilors first arrived to interview Bashir, he explained about his podcasts and examples of them were played on a boombox.  Unfortunately, the sound was so muffled that I could not hear what was said.  Yet I could tell by the horrified expression on Najma’s face and the confused ones on the councilors’, that it was something extremely inappropriate.  I also had trouble discerning some of the stronger accents used by the actors, especially when they were speaking quickly.

A few gags were more widely recognized across cultures included the plying of food on the guests, Gulzar shovelling leftovers into plastic takeout containers, and rhyming through countless names to determine the connection between Sultan and Al Nashir.  Another repeated joke involved the grandfather Dadapapa, who shows signs of dementia, going on and on providing endless blessings that required the guests to continually bow in acknowledgement.

The second act tones down the humour a bit and delves into more heartwarming concepts of family, goals and sacrifice.  We learn that Bashir’s father Sultan had to give up his goal of completing university because his family could not afford it and because they had to flee their home as refugees.  In a very touching scene, Dadapapa mistakenly thinks Bashir is actually Sultan and apologizes to him for making him to give up on his dreams.  This makes Bashir reconsider whether his life choices have been fair to his family.  In the end, The Wrong Bashir is a lively, humorous and ultimately touching comedy that can be appreciated on a whole other level for those who are familiar with Ismaili jargon and references.

Whenever possible, we try to attend the show that has a post show “talkback” where the play’s actors answer questions about their experiences.  For the Wrong Bashir talkback, we also got to hear from the playwright Zahida Rahemtula herself.  We found out that the play was written over 6 years ago and first premiered in Vancouver in 2023.  Her own father, Salem Rahemtula, played the role of Dadapapa and she incorporated situations from their own lives and stories that she heard from her grandparents into her writing.  The actress who played the grandmother revealed that this was her first acting role and that she was initially intimidated acting alongside more experienced performers.  We found out that aspects of the play changed making the transition from Vancouver to Toronto.  Initially the grandfather was Bashir’s mother’s parent instead of his father’s.  The actor playing the councillor Mousaud explained that there used to be even more slapstick in his role, but he toned it down to let the situations drive the comedy.