By 1976, the mercenarily brilliant artist Andy Warhol had figured out there was bacon to be brought home from painting portraits of the rich and famous. And so when the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations, Fereydoun Hoveyda, offered to arrange for the white-haired iconoclast to journey to Tehran to take preparatory Polaroids of the Shah’s wife, Farah Pahlavi, Warhol was all in with the idea.
And thus Warhol found himself ordering room-service caviar at the Royal Tehran Hilton in a modern, culture-loving city that would not be so easily recognized today.
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In “Andy Warhol in Iran,” a two-character play first seen last summer at the Barrington Stage Company in the Berkshires and now in its Chicago premiere at the Northlight Theatre, the writer Brent Askari imagines a scenario wherein Warhol encounters a young Iranian revolutionary, Farhad (Hamid Dehghani) who plans to kidnap the famous face of pop art as a pawn who might be used for political purposes.
Warhol, who is played at Northlight by Rob Lindley under the direction of BJ Jones, is having a moment in the theater. In December, I saw the actor Paul Bettany take him on in Anthony McCarten’s “The Collaboration,” a Broadway piece about Warhol’s work with the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (played by Jeremy Pope). McCarten’s play was based on real-life events; Askari imagines an alternate reality at the Tehran Hilton. And set designer Todd Rosenthal recreates the lux room.
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The result at Northlight is a modestly entertaining piece of theater — it’s only 70 minutes — that falls somewhat short of riveting real-time drama (you don’t really believe Warhol is in any danger) but debates a lot of interesting cultural history. Those ideas, richly articulated here, are enhanced by two honest performances and projections from Mike Tutaj that underpin Warhol’s musings on art and commerce, and also Farhad’s narration about the history of his beloved city, a place that has seen so many people and entities try and mold it in their preferred image.
Askari doesn’t take a clear or radical position on the Iranian revolution (just three years away at the point where the play is set) but offers two fundamentally sympathetic characters with the rise in fundamentalism that led to the disruption of so many of the nation’s freedoms squarely placed on the shoulders of imperialist and corporate malfeasance and myopia. Dehghani’s Farhad, well-educated and literarily inclined, is not unlike a U.S. progressive trying to persuade the famously agnostic Warhol into a greater level of political engagement.
Warhol is a fascinating assignment for an actor. I’ve seen two strong performers, working with two different directors, play him in the last few weeks and the interpretations were quite distinct and yet both were complex and compelling. For all his interest in commerce and duplicability, Warhol was a true original. And, as this play makes clear, a famous figure in the now-lost Tehran of 1976.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
Review: “Andy Warhol in Iran” (3 stars)
When: Through Feb. 19
Where: Northlight Theatre at the North Shore Center for the Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie
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Running time: 1 hour, 10 minutes
Tickets: $30-$89 at 847-673-6300 or northlight.org
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Review: 'Andy Warhol in Iran' imagines that the famous pop artist encountered an Iranian revolutionary - Chicago Tribune
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