The Wrong Bashir

Firehall Arts Centre to March 12, 2023
Tickets from $25 at www.tickets.firehallartscentre.ca or 604-689-0926
Pay-What-You-Can Tuesdays at 7:30PM and Wednesdays at 1PM

Posted March 4, 2023

The Wrong Bashir found the right audience on opening night if gales of laughter are any indication. From the curtain opener – with all the members of the multigenerational Ladha family racing back and forth, in and out of the wings, arms and hands waving – to the surprise at curtain fall, the sold-out crowd at the Firehall had a grand time. Me, not so much but then farce has never been my favourite genre. Hard to get it right but, to its credit, director Daniela Atiencia and cast got a lot of it right and the audience responded with tremendous enthusiasm.

Five years in the making, The Wrong Bashir is the debut play by Zahida Rahemtulla whose grandparents emigrated to Canada during Idi Amin’s 1972 expulsion on 90-day notice of 80,000 non-Blacks – mostly South Asians – from Uganda. While some countries refused to accept the refugees, Canada welcomed 7,000 of them even to the point of sending planes to help with the exodus. But as the playwright pointed out during a recent CBC interview, Canadian stages have not heard much about them since then.

In Rahemtulla’s play, featuring an all-South Asian cast, Bashir (Aman Mann), the son of Najma Ladha (Neha Devi Singh) and Sultan Ladha (Seth Ranaweera), has just moved back home, having run out of money. Bashir is studying philosophy and working parttime at Banyen Books but mostly he spends his time working on a podcast – The Smiling Nihilist – that he hopes will make him some money. He’s plagued by existential angst and is more than a little removed from his family’s Ismaili faith.

And then comes a surprise: he has been selected by Al-Nashir Manji (Hussein Janmohamed) and Mansour (Parm Soor), the mosque committee, to be the Student Mukhisaheb, an honorary position that, I think, involves being a spiritual guide to young adults in the Ismaili community. The family – mom, dad, sister, grandmother and grandfather and an old family friend – are thrilled. But not Bashir who hasn’t been going to the mosque at all to the dismay and embarrassment of his parents and grandparents; he cannot even recite the Holy Du’a, the Ismaili daily prayer. But how can he refuse the honour when his family is so proud of him being chosen?

The fun begins. Much like Kim’s Convenience, The Wrong Bashir offers characters familiar to and loved by their communities: the fussy, hyperventilating mother; the more relaxed dad trying to be cool; the sister (Sabrina Vellani) running interference between her slightly westernized parents and her Canadian-born brother; the doting, sari-wearing grandmother (Shera Haji) and forgetful or cognitively-challenged grandfather (Salim Rahemtulla); and the gossipy family friend (Leena Manro). Rounding out the picture are the two committee members (Janmohamed and Soor) who spend ages excitedly explaining the work of all the various committees to arrive at Bashir as the successful candidate.

The plot, of course, lends itself to farce: over-the-top exaggeration (mostly Soor whose trouser-hitching constantly  threatened a wardrobe failure); running about; hiding out; eye-rolling; sneaky attempts to leave; and a twist at the end that you see coming from the title itself.

Set designer Kimira Reddy provides an attractive cutaway roof with a comfortable, contemporary living room interior: sofa, coffee table, settee and rug and a stage left kitchen in which secret conversations can be held. Hiding out in the kitchen is part of the way The Wrong Bashir functions.

The play does, however, have some quieter, more subtle  moments and these I found the most engaging parts of the show. As the grandfather (played by the playwright’s own 70-something father, onstage for the first time in his life), Rahemtulla shares some of his character’s memories of Uganda prior to the purge. Rahemtulla is so grounded, so natural, that it is a joy watching him; his sly smile is utterly charming.

It is in this less frenzied scene with his grandfather that young Bashir comes to see himself as part of history and to begin to address his responsibility as a Canadian Ismaili. Mann shines in this quiet moment as he shows us the depth of Bashir’s confusion over his identity and his anxiety about the future.

My personal reservations about farce aside as well as some difficulty understanding the heavily accented dialogue, The Wrong Bashir is going to be a big hit; for some, it will be a laugh-yourself-silly evening. It’s a huge tribute to Touchstone Theatre’s Flying Start program, designed to promote new playwrights, and to co-presenters, the Firehall Arts Centre and Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre. Tickets will probably go fast.