The funniest new play of the year is about the genocide of Armenians during World War I. The playwright Talene Monahon never makes light of the mass murder of a million Armenians during death marches to the Syrian Desert and the forced Islamization of others. She flaunts a real flair for the absurd to highlight the plight of those who survived and immigrated to the United States. Monahon’s “Meet the Cartozians” opened Monday at Second Stage, and the only people who should skip seeing it are the world’s most famous Armenians, the Kardasians.
The title is clearly a take off on the reality show “Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” but the first act of this two hour 30-minute play takes place long before the invention of television. The time and place is Portland, Oregon, in 1923-24 when the immigrant Tatos O. Cartozian had to defend his status as an American citizen on the grounds that Armenians were white, not Asian. The Irish-American lawyer Wallace McCamant handled and won the case.
In act one, Monahon showcases how McCamant (Will Brill) prepares Cartozian (Nael Nacer) for the trial. It’s a prep session loaded with information about the Naturalization Act of 1790, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and other important legal decisions that should bore the hell out of any theatergoer. Fortunately, Monahon makes these talks incredibly digestible through her incredible wit and gift for storytelling. I have no idea all the liberties this playwright has taken with the real McCamant and the real Cartozian. For starters, however, Cartozian had three sons and two daughters but only one of each makes it into her retelling. There’s the son (Raffi Barsoumian), the daughter (Tamara Sevunts), the grandmother (Andrea Martin) and, for a very brief cameo appearance, a mysterious woman (Susan Pourfar).
Monahon exploits the cultural and language clash between this Armenian family and the Irish McCamant for maximum comic effect, and it helps immeasurably that Will Brill is nothing short of brilliant in switching within a split second from sympathetic to patronizing to tone-deaf to insensitive to love struck over Hazel, played with enormous vulnerability by Tamara Sevunts.
The rest of the Cartozian family runs the gamut. Nacer is a bit bewildered, Barsoumian’s alternately proud and belligerent, Pourfar’s very hysterical and Martin’s totally hilarious, as usual.
For added levity, there’s the dark absurdity of what the Cartozians are about to face in court. As the prosecutor put it at the time, “Without being able to define a white person, the average man in the street understands distinctly what it means.” McCamant tries to explain to his dumbfounded clients that the definition of “white” is mutable, since even Irishmen like himself, as well as Italians and Greeks and Jews, weren’t always considered to be white.
It’s nonsense, and Monahon knows just how to showcase that fact.
With act two, “Meet the Cartozians” takes on a much easier comic target: reality TV in the vein of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.”
One descendent of the Cartosian family is now the most famous Armenian in the world, thanks to her reality TV show “Meet the Cartozians.” The actors of the first act are now double cast as that show’s invited participants in taping an episode on contemporary Armenian culture in Glendale, California. A stylist has even provided traditional costumes (by Enver Chakartash) for them to wear, and traditional food is served. Since the star is having a “glam issue,” the show’s cinematographer (Will Brill) begins the shoot without her. Soon, an argument ensues on what it means to be Armenian, and despite a century having passed, the old issues of being white or not, European or Middle Eastern or Asian remain unresolved.
David Cromer directs, and a hallmark of his many stellar productions is the actors’ comic timing. No one directs comedy better than Cromer; he invariably finds the humor in adversity. And there’s something else that makes him one of the great directors: He champions and takes on plays by writers even an avid theatergoer has probably never heard of. This autumn, he preceded “Cartozians” with the exquisite “Caroline” by Preston Max Allen. If Cromer is directing, you know it’s worth seeing.
