Even in retrospect, actor Aasif Mandvi seems stunned at being cast in a great big Broadway musical, "Oklahoma!" no less.
"This was not on my radar," he shakes his head. "When my agent called to tell me about the audition, I laughed. 'You gotta be kidding.' "
He wasn't kidding, and neither was director Trevor Nunn when he cast the thirtysomething Bombay native in the featured role of Ali Hakim, a Persian peddler in the sprawling turn-of-the-century Oklahoma Territory as seen through the eyes of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II.
Mandvi's appearance in the legendary show, which bowed on Broadway at the Gershwin Theatre March 21, marks his debut on the Great White Way--an event that's significant for another reason as well, he points out. "I believe I'm the first East Indian to be cast in a major part in a Broadway musical production."
So how does he reconcile himself to playing a sleazy, wily, third-world lowlife painted with broad comic strokes? After all, by his own admission, Mandvi has suffered from stereotypic ethnic typecasting, at least in the past.
"I don't see Ali as sleazy," says the easygoing Mandvi, who meets with us in an Upper West Side eatery. "He is probably the smartest character in the show. He is one of the first immigrants in the Wild West and survives any way he can. Yes, he goes from town to town, and sleeps with anyone and everyone. But in the context of the world in which he finds himself--it is a place and time where people kill each other over nothing--he's no worse than anyone else.
"In fact, he's the same as everyone else," Mandvi continues. "He does not define himself by his ethnic group and is not restricted by the bigotry that others might project onto him. And, ultimately, he is integrated into the group through marriage, and it's a shotgun wedding, like that of many of the men in that community. What I love about Ali is just how much he is part of the landscape."
The major obstacle in tackling Ali, says Mandvi, is to keep him real--admittedly within a comic tradition--yet not cross the line into Borscht Belt. Mandvi says that the role (created by Yiddish theatre great Joseph Buloff) is usually played as a Jew pretending to be a Persian, but that is not the approach here. Indeed, Mandvi is careful to do a precise Persian accent and not some generic Mideastern sound.
Within those parameters, he says, "I think it's great for audiences to see a Persian character who is neither a Mideastern spokesperson on CNN nor a terrorist. This is especially important in these post-9/11 days."
A Burgeoning Film Career
This has been a good year for Mandvi. In addition to his Broadway gig, he will soon be seen playing the title role in the newest Merchant-Ivory film, "The Mystic Masseur," based on Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul's novel, and he'll be co-starring in another film, "American Chai."
He has been featured in a number of plays--
"subUrbia," "Death Defying Acts," "Trudy Blue"--and boasts an array of films on his resume, like "Analyze This," "The Siege," and "Die Hard with a Vengeance." On the small screen, his credits include "Sex and the City," "Oz," "Law & Order," and "Nash Bridges," among others.
But he is perhaps best known for his 1999 Obie-winning semi-autobiographical solo show, "Sakina's Restaurant," which played at the American Place Theatre for six months and earned much critical and popular acclaim.