Theater: “Elyria” at Atlantic Theater Company
Return with us now to those great films of Bollywood. Never seen one? No matter. Deepa Purohit’s “Elyria” has enough melodrama, music and star-crossed romance for four Bollywood spectaculars.
Only the setting for this absorbing tale is not the streets of Mumbai, but Elyria, which despite its exotic-sounding name is a relatively quiet suburb of Cleveland. Two women, Vasanta (Nilanjana Bose) and Dhatta (Guilshan Mia) have a chance and not altogether pleasant encounter at a local Indian festival. Turns out they knew each other as teenagers in a small village in Mombasa, Kenya and since parting, have lived vastly different lives.
Vasanta is a beautician struggling to make ends meet and supporting Shiv (Sanjay da Silva), her dreamer non-working husband. Dhatta has become a lady of leisure, married to Charu (the excellent Bhavesh Patel), a prominent surgeon at the local hospital. Their son Rohan (Mohit Gautam) is immersed in his studies at med school, only occasionally distracted by his hip-hop Muslim buddy Hassanali (Omar Shafiuzzaman).
Much of the mystery surrounding the women and their families unfolds throughout the course of the play, with actors playing the younger versions of the women and the doctor. There is a fair amount of dancing (the young Mahimi Saigal is superb) along with Indian music and dialog in Hindi and other Indian languages. If that isn’t authentically South Indian, I’ll eat my paratha bread—and yours. Another winner from Atlantic Theater Company.