Iris Bahr is pretty, but you could watch her for the full
span of her 54-minute one-woman production and still manage to miss that.Â
With the help of a masculine hairdo (she cut her hair for
the show, and wears it slicked back) and some minimal wardrobe changes, Bahr
morphs into no less than seven different characters, each with individual, and
often hilarious, accents. The show is called “Planet America, or Are You
Carrying Any Fruits of Vegetables?” and Bahr’s characters bring differing
perspectives to the themes of American isolationism, xenophobia and racism.Â
The issues are particularly timely, but for Bahr, who was
recently nominated for an L.A. Weekly best solo performance award, they were
also personal. She said she’d finished the first draft prior to the Sept. 11
terror attacks. Growing up in Riverdale, N.Y., and Herzliya, Israel, she said,
“I have the advantage of having lived in two very different cultures.” It made
her conscious of issues like terrorism and immigration long ago.
The homogeneity of Israeli society when compared with
heterogeneous America was something else that resonated with her. So was the
American term for illegal immigrants: “aliens.”
The story centers around Violet Star, a repressed
25-year-old virgin, who aspires to work for the Immigration and Naturalization
Service to help rid her country of “hypersexed Latin sluts” like the one whom
she blames for her parents’ divorce. Her first day on the job brings encounters
with a colorful bunch. It also includes many telephone calls from her nagging
Israeli mother, who, to Violet’s acute distress, also happens to be a recent
and enthusiastic Christian convert.Â
The exaggerated characters emphasize various points.
Muscovite Svetlana reminds Violet that “you only have one mother.” Black-hatted
Yankel tells of his rebbe’s favorite isolationist saying, “If curiosity kills
the cat, it slaughters the Jew.” Paraplegic Jimmy O’Riordan’s brogued verbal
seductions reveal to Violet her own handicaps.
In the end, Bahr’s appearance may get lost to her
characters, but her piece still bears a personal stamp. “I’m not kind of
wishy-washy and new agey. I don’t think everyone could get along,” she said.
“It’s really hard not to sound preachy,” but one message is that “isolation is
a basic part of the human condition and it’s common to everyone.”
8 p.m. $15. Tuesdays through Feb. 4 at the Elephant Theatre,
6322 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. (323) 858-7535.
