WASHING AWAY DOUBTS ABOUT GREAT THEATER
And now for something completely different for the holiday entertainment season, a one-man show called Dishwasher Dreams performed by a Bangladesh actor and playwright named Alaudin Ullah.
For about 90 continuous minutes at the Writers Theatre, Ullah escorts the audience on a memory trip through his life as a Muslim of Bangladesh ancestry growing up in in the United States, starting in Spanish Harlem in New York City and then shifting to southern California out west. It’s quite a jaunt and viewers who may initially concerned that the show is a little esoteric should be won over in the first few minutes of the evening. Ullah has quite a life to talk about and his informal biographical narration is funny, informative, dramatic, and never dull.
Technically, Dishwasher Dreams is a two man show because Ullah is accompanied throughout the evening by Avirodh Sharma, a musician of Indian ancestry who silently sits cross-legged at the rear of the stage playing a pair of traditional Asian drums, called the tabla, the smaller one high pitched and the larger one contributing bass undertones. Sharma’s dazzling finger work elevates the two percussion instruments into a small orchestra, both in brief solos and discretely added aural shadings to Ullan’s monologue. (Sharma plays a mini concert before Ullah takes the stage that should not be missed.)
The first third of Ullah’s show is mostly stand-up comedy, a routine reflecting his roots in the American comedy club scene. Ullah weaves jokes into accounts of his hardscrabble life in Bangladesh mingled with his wry and often perplexed observations about American life as seen through the eyes of a very foreign immigrant.
The show’s title is a reference to Ulla’s father, who managed to enter the United States as a young man desperate to leave the crime and poverty of Bangladesh. The father worked most of his life in this country as a lowly dishwasher in restaurants. But Ullah’s father never let go of his dreams to achieve success in his adopted country.
Dishwasher Dreams gradually coalesces into descriptions of Ullah’s attempts to break into American show business as a Bangladesh comedian, a rare and not heavily sought after skill in the USA. He recounts at length his admiration for comedian George Carlin and the man’s droll and incisive dissections of American society. Much of the later part of the show is a celebration of Ullah’s love of baseball. Ullah fell in love with the sport after settling in Spanish Harlem in New York City, the home of the New York Yankees and the great Yankee slugger Reggie Jackson. Ullah’s passionate recollections of the Yankees reveals a performer of considerable acting chops.
Dishwasher Dreams is an intimate production. Throughout the performance, Ullah wears a simple T-shirt and jeans as he roams the empty stage with only a single chair as a prop. The audience follows him physically through the deft use of a spotlight that tracks the comedian back and forth and side to side with Sharma’s tablas providing atmospheric accents. The result is an absorbing one-way conversation between Ullah and the attentive audience.
The technical credits are assigned to Yu Shibagaki (set designer), Anshuman Bhatia (lighting designer), and Izumi Inaba (costume designer). But the main behind the scenes hero of the production is director Chay Yew, who gave Chicagoland audiences so many terrific productions as the artistic director of the Victory Gardens Theater from 2011 to 2020. Under Yew’s partnership with Ullah, Dishwasher Dreams sustains its hold on the audience the full time and actually builds dramatically down the stretch. Hopefully local theaters will lure the director back for more assignments. He is a master.
photos by Michael Brosilow
Dishwasher Dreams
Writers Theatre, 325 Tudor Court in Glencoe
ends on January 16, 2022
Wed & Sat at 3 & 7:30; Thurs & Fri at 7:30; Sun at 2 & 6
for tickets ($35 to $90), call 847.242.6000 or visit Writers Theatre
for more shows, visit Theatre in Chicago