Theater: Letters of Suresh

By Rajiv Joseph

The best moment in Rajiv Joseph’s new play “Letters of Suresh” @ 2nd Stage is when the eloquent Thom Sesma steps on stage nearly at the end. Theatergoers and Sondheim fans may recognize him from a recent production of “Pacific Overtures,” where he and several other actors sang “Someone in a Tree,” a lovely ballad from that show.

Sesma’s character, a recently deceased Roman Catholic priest who had survived the atomic bomb blast in Nagasaki, speaks about a love he had for a fellow priest that was never consummated—and that led to a life of regret. The priest had revealed this secret in a letter to Suresh (Ramiz Monsef), an Indian-American professional who had met the priest in Japan at an origami convention. Meanwhile, the priest’s Japanese-American grandniece Melody, (Olivia Oguba) having found Suresh’s name in her uncle’s correspondence,  has also been writing to Suresh, often receiving no response.

Letters are a wonderful means of communication—I wish we wrote more of them—but generally (with the exception of plays like “84 Charing Cross Road”) they are rather static dramatically. Additionally, the play tends to rely so much on the exchange of letters between the various characters that it is often hard to follow who’s writing to whom, and who’s not writing to whom. This is wonderful material—for a novel.

Monsef does have one memorable moment: when he reads a letter he has written to the priest in fluent Japanese (which is simultaneously translated for us on screen.) Such clear communication would have been welcome through the play. In English.