Haram Iran

Haram is the Arabic word for forbidden, and in Iran it seems everything not required is haram. Paul Deratany's play deals with the ill-fated real-life friendship of two 15-year-old boys: Ayaz Marhouni (Tamer Aziz) and Mahmoud Asgari (Narendra "Andy" Gala). The Mullah (Maz Siam), whose authority is absolute under the law of Sharia, proclaims that in Iran, unlike in decadent Western countries, there is no homosexuality. But Ayaz and Mahmoud have disturbing feelings about each other, which they don't understand and for which they are not prepared. When Mahmoud is given a brutal beating by his father, Ayaz offers to bathe his wounds.

Ayaz is the son of an educated woman (Anoush NeVart), who has given him access to Western books, including "Catcher in the Rye." He has some awareness of his feelings and furtively uses the situation to initiate sexual contact. He persuades Mahmoud to remove his shirt and trousers and lie on the bed so his wounds can be treated. Fareed (Michael Tauzin), Mahmoud's football buddy, spies them in this compromising position and—provoked by his own jealousy and suspicion of the educated, Westernized Ayaz—accuses him of sexual assault.

When the force of Muslim law is unleashed, Ayaz and Mahmoud are put on trial in the religious court presided over by the fanatical Mullah, and all three boys are destroyed. Fareed realizes that he has unwittingly condemned his friend Mahmoud as well as his enemy Ayaz, and he's pressured into delivering false testimony against them. Ayaz's mother hires a lawyer in an attempt to save her son, but the Mullah, whose only concern is obtaining confessions, blames the lowly woman for defaming her absent husband, spreading Western influence, and encouraging forbidden behavior. Ayaz and Mahmoud are sentenced to suffer 128 lashes and death by hanging.

The play stacks the cards so relentlessly that the drama is sometimes reduced to melodrama, but it scarifyingly demonstrates the dangers of dogmatic theocracy, and the ways in which a society that denies facts of human nature can pervert the justice it proclaims.

Director Michael Matthews' powerful production is alternately tender and gut-wrenching, and it mercilessly drives home its point. Aziz and Gala eloquently portray the innocence and budding sexuality of the two boys, Tauzin makes a painfully tormented figure of Fareed, and NeVart skillfully captures the mother's desperate anguish.


Presented by and at the Celebration Theatre, 7051B Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Mar. 5-Apr. 4. Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m. (323) 957-1884. www.celebrationtheatre.com.