“What Became of Us” is at heart a modest, moving two-character play about a brother and a sister, the children of immigrant parents, who tell us about each other over the course of their entire lifetimes. It’s an often engaging, sometime poignant look at the evolution of a sibling relationship, colored by the older sister having been born abroad, the brother born after their parents immigrated. But the production is also shot through with several unusual choices, which I found alternately innovative and undermining; sometimes just baffling.
This began before I even entered the theater, with a notice in red ink tacked to the door informing us that the play will feature scents of orange and lavender.
What an odd trigger warning, I thought, surely unnecessary. But then, I thought, who am I to judge other people’s sensitivities? Or maybe it’s a joke?
I felt similarly uncertain about the main quirk, or innovation, or gimmick of the production. There are two sets of casts: Rosalind Chao and BD Wong, both of Asian descent, are currently portraying the siblings; that’s who I saw in the roles. In a few days, Shohreh Aghdashloo and Tony Shalhoub, both of Middle Eastern descent, completely take over the roles. But for four performances, we’re told in the marketing material, “both casts will perform back-to-back as an exclusive double-feature event.”
The decision to use separate casts of different ethnic origins is baked into playwright Shayan Lotfi’s script, which remains unchanged no matter who is portraying the characters. This is a main reason why the script in crucial aspects favors the generic over the particular, and too often feels like a writing exercise. The characters are given the names Q and Z, and talk about “The Old Country” and “This Country.” This abstract approach feels echoed in the set, which is little more than an abstract-looking bench that the two characters occasionally rotate, and the distancing effect is emphasized by director Jennifer Chang’s staging, in which the two actors rarely look at one another, instead face the audience.
The most generous interpretation of the choice here is that the playwright wants to demonstrate the similarity among immigrant families. But it results in some strained writing, which on occasion dips into cliché.
“They led lives in The Old Country extraordinary only in their extreme ordinariness,” Q tells us.
This is in the first section of the play, when Q (Chao) is on stage by herself, describing her parents’ life in the Old Country, their decision to immigrate to This Country, and how, once arrived, they worked their way up from selling snacks outside office buildings to running a newsstand to owning a corner store. Each sentence that Q says in this section begins with “They…”
Z (Wong) then appears on stage, and Q says: “You were born one year, two months, and six days after we arrived to This Country. “ The two then take turns talking about each other, beginning each sentence with “You…”
The two use this construction to describe various moments in their respective childhoods, occasionally presenting dialogue between the two by having each preface the other’s line with “You said….”
A picture emerges of the obedient daughter and the rebellious son.
Z says of Q: “You were accepted into a university, one of the fancy ones where the buildings are older than This Country, with a nearly-full scholarship. You listened quietly as our parents said it would be a betrayal to leave. “
Later, Q says of Z: “You left for culinary school on the other side of the country, despite the fact you were never seen cooking, not once.”
Their differing attitudes toward their parents eventually cause a rift between them.
That leads to the third section, where each sentence begins with “I” as they describe their separate lives apart. Q has become a librarian, and takes a sabbatical to the Old Country. Z becomes a husband and a father, to a child he refers to only as “the Golden Child.” (“I began to allow myself to see things through the Golden Child’s eyes, a world with endless sources of wonder and amazement.”) It is the child’s question about family that prompts Z, after so many years, to call his sister. “He’d love to meet you, if you wanted to?”
In the fourth section, each of the characters takes turns saying three sentences, the first beginning with “You,” the second with “I,” the third with “We.”
In the fifth section, as they grow old, the sentences from each begin “I” and then “You”
As a writing exercise, I suppose this strict construction shows impressive discipline, and perhaps provides grist for future school essays. But, like the trigger warning, it feels unnecessary.
It’s a testament to the parts of Lofti’s script that are concrete and specific, as well as to the performances by Chao and Wong, that one can ultimately feel the characters embodied and particular. There are moments when their lives as foreigners in a new land hit with some force (“You cried when we came home one night to find our windows smashed, our father lying to you that it was simply random.”) But their problems as newcomers are much more evident when they are young; their relationship takes center stage as they age. “What Became of Us” is most touching because so many of us are also touched by a complicated relationship with a family member with whom we have grown up, apart, and old together.
What Became of Us
Atlantic Stage 2 through June 29
Running time: 75 minutes with no intermission
Tickets: $81 to $195
Written by Shayan Lotfi
Directed by Jennifer Chang
Sets by Tanya Orellana, costumes by Rodrigo Muñoz, lighting by Reza Behjat, original music and sound by Fan Zhang
Cast: Rosalind Chao as Q and BD Wong as Z through June 15, 2024. Shohreh Aghdashloo as Q and Tony Shalhoub as Z June 10 – June 29, 2024. Both casts will perform back-to-back June 11-13 “as an exclusive double-feature event.”
