A Review of
Scientific Proof for Failure of Love!
Iran Theater- Ahmadreza Hajjarzadeh: It seems Samaneh Zandinejad is interested in surprising her spectators these days. She is performing "Special Relativity" following her successful direction of "The Blackbird" as a young and creative director. The new performance of "Special Relativity" is more similar to her previous directions contrary to her change of method in "The Blackbird".
Although "Special Relativity" is not new in the record of Ms Zandinejad and is a performance from MonLeev Festival, it has a chance to be seen by more spectators now. The play with a short and attractive monologue cannot be ignored easily. "Special Relativity" owes its success to the smooth play and dedicated acting of Bahar Katuzi. It is trying to tell the story of love through formulas, rules and physics without being pretentious.
Even if love does not have a happy ending for Mona Daneshbonian, a character played by Bahar Katuzi, it would give her a different experience. The rhythm of play is good since the entrance of spectators to the auditorium until the end. But a one-minute gap between the entrance and the time the character welcome the spectators seriously and starts working on her dissertation surprises and disappoints audience. The audience members suppose they should expect a boring play.
Following listening to a one-minute academic monologue, the spectators start seeing a non-academic play by a physics student. The spectators will be interested in a delicate sense of humor covered under physics formulas to prove victories and failures of in-love Mona. Bahar Katuzi do not have a strange acting. She can easily present an active and cool student to the spectators. It seems love has never been serious for her or she has been so busy with academic activities that love has had no chance in her life until the new semester when she sees a handsome professor who makes her to face a question whose solution is not simple.
“Special Relativity” has similarities with a short story written by noted Iranian writer Mostafa Mastour. This time, a teacher falls for his/her student and is trying to solve it through physics and mathematics. The story is titled “Several authentic narrations about love”.
In direction, Samaneh Zandinejad cannot be ignored. But she has done nothing special for “Special Relativity”. What makes her important as director is her proposals on how to perform the play. Otherwise, the play by Katuzi never ever goes beyond a love narration…