Review: An Iranian Myth Comes to Life With Brilliant Shadow Puppetry in Song of the North

Romeo and Juliet weren’t the first pair of star-crossed lovers. In the Iranian epic poem Shanameh, written around the year 1000, there’s the story of Manijeh and Bijan, two young people who fall in love and try to bring peace to their warring countries. That’s the subject of Hamid Rahmanian’s truly extraordinary Song of the North, a dazzling show that combines shadow puppetry, animation, and how’d-they-do-that stagecraft. Now playing at the New Victory Theater for a short run, it’s worth getting a ticket to if you still can.

The Shanameh contains many stories, but Rahmanian and playwright Melissa Hibbard have chosen one that focuses on Manijeh (Sarah Westman), a young princess from Turan (a historical region near Iran) who’s an ace with a bow and arrow and can enchant listeners with her voice. She falls hard for a boastful, inexperienced Iranian knight named Bijan (Clay Westman), who breaks a boarder treaty and enters Turan to kill some demons. As a result, Manijeh’s father, the king of Turan, has Bijan thrown into the Pit of Despair, where Bijan languishes until he’s rescued by Rostam (Sam Rotengold) and the two lovers are reunited.

Upon entering the theater, there’s nothing to prepare you for the way this story will be told. Actors don costumes and set up equipment on an otherwise empty stage, and then a large screen descends. For the next 80 minutes, the shadows of almost 500 handmade puppets bring the tale to life with the music of Loga Ramin Torkian accompanying the action. The experience is something like watching a movie, but shadows of live actors wearing huge shadow-puppet masks root the show in theater. In all my years covering children’s shows, I’ve never seen anything quite like this.

The New Victory Theater’s programming is geared toward young people, so I was surprised to see so many adults in the audience at the performance I attended. Though the story deals with war, there’s little in the way of violence other than one scene in which Bijan slays a horde of demons, so it’s suitable for all but the youngest. But the show’s themes tap into crises happening in several war-torn regions around the world. Adults will find resonance in that, and parents can use the story as a vehicle for teaching kids about the conflicts they might be hearing about on the news, as well as other reactions to conflict, such as bravery and forgiveness (we all need reminders of those).

With timely messages, humorous dialogue, and eye-popping effects, Song of the South has something to say to every age group. Romeo and Juliet weren’t lucky in love because of their fighting families. Manijeh and Bijan show us that it doesn’t have to be that way.