Review: Andy Warhol in Iran

by Emma Riva

Sometimes, the best thing to do to a character is trap them. This is the crux for the romcom trope of being marooned in a stuck elevator or the horror franchise storyline of strangers kidnapped together. Circumstances that push characters in fiction together and force them to confront themselves is often friction that leads to the best, most explosive stories. In theatre, you’re trapped with the characters on stage, too.

Brent Askari’s Andy Warhol in Iran plays with the “trapped together” trope, using only two characters in one Iranian hotel room for the eighty-minute duration of the production. There’s one familiar character, Warhol (Jeffrey Emerson), and one unfamiliar one, Farhad (Arian Rad), a fictional Iranian revolutionary. Part of what makes the “trapped together” trope so good is that it forces a story down to its bare bones and the characters down to their essences. Warhol, though, is not a man known for easily baring his essence.

Askari frames the play around Warhol’s trip to Iran to photograph the shah’s wife. Farhad corners Warhol in his hotel room, disguised as a busboy, and attempts to kidnap him to protest the shah’s violent, authoritarian regime. Farhad is waiting for his co-conspirators, who never show up, prompting deeper and more vulnerable conversations with Warhol. The storyline follows a couple through-line questions: Is all art political? If not, should it be? What ethical responsibility do artists have, if any? Do artists owe the world and their viewers, buyers, or fans alignment with those fans’ ethical standards?

There’s a fair amount of breaking-the-fourth-wall monologuing within the narrative of the show, some of which is more effective than others—some historical context I didn’t feel was necessary, but that probably was in order to make sure everyone in the audience got the full gist. Occasionally, the characters felt like mouthpieces for larger philosophical ideas rather than part of the story in their own right, and some of Warhol’s characterization felt a little on the nose.

But Emerson and Rad’s chemistry kept the pace going, and the show’s latter half is its strongest exploration of the dichotomy between real and fake. Farhad as a kidnapper who’s really just a kid, not particularly adept at kidnapping, keeps it from veering too far into predictability. Warhol and Farhad’s discovery that they have more in common with each other than they think is a positive note of unity for a production that’s fairly dark and tense on the whole. The characters have a few moments of tenderness between them that soften the edges.

The show comes at the Warhol Museum’s thirtieth anniversary, when Warhol’s ethics have been in question multiple times in recent history. Director Patrick Moore’s visit to Saudi Arabia in early 2023. Controversy around exhibiting Warhol’s Ten Portraits of Jews in the Twentieth Century in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war. Andy Warhol in Iran ran in Chicago previously, but I had to wonder how the context changed in Warhol’s hometown, with tensions running high about Warhol’s political presence. In that way, the play does add something to the conversation by reminding people about the complexity of Warhol’s legacy.

One of Andy Warhol in Iran’s most powerful moments is near its conclusion, when Warhol reflects that revolutions are, in a way, just like his copies of screenprints. The revolutionaries succeeded in ousting the shah, but then simply replaced the shah with another authoritarian leader. Revolutions are cyclical and what feels like crisis at one moment will become peace, then crisis again. The set flashes murdered Iranian Kurdish civilian Jina Mahsa Amini’s face to the crowd in one of the screens above the stage as a reminder of the human cost of these revolutionary ideas. That, to me, was the central thread of the show: Ideas have a human cost. Warhol and Farhad debate politics, but both have gunshot wounds in their stomachs. No amount of posturing can erase those wounds.

In a sense, Andy Warhol in Iran might best be read as a cautionary tale about dehumanization. Sometimes you have to dehumanize others or yourself in order to get by, but it always backfires. Warhol confessed to want to be a machine, but he was human. Farhad attempted to temper his humanity to become a kidnapper, but he couldn’t help seeing the person in front of him. When Warhol says he doesn’t want to get political, Farhad utters the line “Politics is people.” Though there are some  complex ideas at work in Andy Warhol in Iran, that’s a simple, straightforward mantra to take away even after leaving the theater, no academic jargon or terms around it. Politics is people.

Brent Askari’s Andy Warhol in Iran was directed for City Theatre by Marc Masterson. Masterson was the company’s longtime artistic director and has been co-artistic director since 2018; the play is the last he has directed in that role. Ran through May 12. Scenic design is by Michael Raiford, with lighting by Paul Whitaker, sound by Zachary Beattie-Brown, projections by Mike Tutaj, and costumes by Susan Tsu. Mehrnaz Tiv served as dramaturg and cultural consultant for the play. Samuel GC Muñoz is the fight choreographer, Sade Namei the dialect coach, and Patti Kelly the production stage manager.