To the Atlas Theater last Saturday night to catch Mosaic Theater Company's 90-minute, no-intermission play, Andy Warhol in Iran. Not having known anything about any trip by Warhol to Iran--not that I'm that acquainted with most of the details of his life--I figured this would be something new and different. It turned out to present a conflict between morality and mammon.
Warhol is ensconced in his hotel room, which is neither lavish nor spartan. He's come to Teheran to take photos so he can paint a picture of the Shah's queen. There's also some suggestion that he would be hired to depict the Shah's family in paint as well. He makes no bones about the obviously large remuneration he is receiving for this effort.
So, when he is surprised and made a prisoner in his hotel room by a young man with a gun who could be described as a terrorist since he says he's part of a group rebelling against the Shah's brutal rule and his vicious secret police (SAVAK) who, with CIA training, maintain his authority and are known to engage in torture and murder to keep him in pwer.
Warhol attempts to talk his way out of being brutalized or killed by this gunman and his cohort. He's just there to take some pictures. The young man recounts how his father was murdered by the Shah's minions and recounts with the assistance of videos flashed on screens the history of U.S. involvement going back to the American and British deposing in the early 1950s of Mohammed Mossadegh, the Iranian prime minister who showed signs of rebelling himself against the Western support of the Shah's authoritarian rule. This murder was carried out, it now is clear, by the CIA.
Warhol's futile attempts to escape are easily frustrated by his captor. There's some development of empathy between the two when their brushes with death are compared--Warhol's major surgery that saved his life after Valerie Solanis shot him, and the gunman's severe injury that also required significant surgery to save him.
While he repeatedly tells Warhol that the details of his life are not germane to the instant situation, he gradually reveals more about his life experience, including time spent in the U.S. The two actors play their characters effectively; Alex Mills as Warhol dons a white-haired wig to re-create Warhol's well-known appearance. He even presents his captor with a similar wig to disguise himself to escape being taken by the police.
There's a surprise that provides a denouement for the play. It is effective in keeping the story believable and suddenly changes the relationship between the two men. All in all, the play was a satisfying dramatic experience that nicely showed how Warhol's status as an artistic rebel was balanced by his commercial focus on maintaining his large art plant, "the Factory", and its employees.
We now know what ultimately happened in Iran, precipitated by the U.S.'s welcoming of the Shah when he abandoned Iran in the face of imminent revolution that generated the Islamic Republic and the taking of the U.S. Embassy and lengthy holding of its personnel as hostages. Iran remains an antagonist to U.S. policy in the Middle East to this day.
The play manages to convey all of this in a well-constructed drama that does not succumb to tedium given we only see two characters for the whole time. Mosaic Theater has a well-deserved reputation in D.C. for creative, edgy theatre; as with the last production we saw there, a bravura tour de force about Louis (Satchmo) Armstrong in which Craig Wallace portrayed Satchmo, his agent, and his wife.
