Review: "Queen" at Long Wharf Theatre

By Nancy Sasso Janis

“Queen,” a play written by playwright and screenwriter Madhuri Shekar, closes the 2021/2022 season at Long Wharf Theatre on Sargent Drive in New Haven. The production, which runs through June 5, is the inaugural production of the National Asian American Theatre Company's National Partnership Project, a new initiative aimed at expanding Asian American representation in theater.

Long Wharf’s artistic director Jacob G. Padrón, whose Sol Project is doing something comparable with Latinx playwrights partnering with theaters across the country, supported the collaboration. “With talented South Asian women at the helm as playwright, director, and protagonist, Queen is a reflection of Long Wharf’s ongoing commitment to foregrounding women- and BIPOC-led productions.”

Shekar’s play won the 2019 New York Innovative Theatre Awards, Outstanding Original Full Length Script and the Edgerton New Play Award. The playwright and screenwriter was born in California and grew up in India, and is currently based in Jersey City. She is an alum of the Juilliard Playwriting program.

The Long Wharf production is directed by Aneesha Kudtarkar, a New York-based theater director and graduate of the Yale School of Drama. She directed “The Who and The What” that was filmed at TheaterWorks Hartford in 2020.

“Queen” follows PhD candidates Sanam and Ariel who have spent the better part of the last decade exhaustively researching vanishing bee populations across the globe. Just as these close friends are about to publish a career-defining paper, Sanam stumbles upon an error in their calculations, which could cause catastrophic damage to their reputations, careers, and friendship.
By the middle of the play, Sanam is confronted with an impossible choice: should she look the other way or stand by her principles and accept the consequences? Ultimately, this is a provocative portrayal of brilliant women confronting inconvenient truths. It raises important academic questions in an entertaining way, for there is plenty of comedy in what could have been a very heavy work.

The script introduces the audience to Bayes’ Law in statistics and the concept of Colony Collapse Disorder that affects honey bees. The title refers to the queen bee of each colony, and perhaps, who will become the “queen” in the cutthroat academic realm. “We could stand to learn a thing or two from honey bees,” notes the director. “They discover, communicate, adapt, and prioritize the survival of their community over the survival of the individual. A worthy lesson indeed.”
The two females lead the cast and both give strong performances.

Avanthika Srinivasan, who holds a BA in French and theater from Princeton University, makes her Off-Broadway debut in the role of the brilliant mathematician Sanan Shah. Stephanie Janssen (Broadway: Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, Mrs. Warren's Profession) plays the role of the beekeeping student Ariel Spiegel.

Ben Livingston, who appeared on Broadway in “Mamma Mia!,” “'One Man Two Guvnors,” and “The Heiress,” plays the graduate students’ advisor, Dr. Philip Hayes in his debut at Long Wharf.
Keshav Moodliar, who was raised between Bombay and New Delhi, recently earned his MFA from The Juilliard School. He portrays Arvind Patel, a young professional who attempts to have a romantic relationship with Sanam Shah.

“Queen” features intriguing scenic design by Junghyun Georgia Lee that fits the theater in the round seating arrangement and contemporary costume design by Phuong Nguyen. The strong lighting design by Yuki Nakase Link highlights the important scenes and the sound design and original music by Daniela Hart, Noel NIchols, and Bailey Trierweiler works well. I had some difficulty catching the lines of the actors when they had their backs to my section of the audience.
“Queen” runs one hour and forty minutes with no intermission and contains some haze.

Please have your vaccination cards ready to be checked at the door and wear N95, KN95, KF94, 3-ply disposable, or a fabric mask atop a 3-ply disposable mask. If you do not have one of these masks, the theater is happy to provide one upon entry. For tickets, please visit: https://longwharf.org/buy-tick...

Immediately following its run at Long Wharf Theatre, this production of Queen will be presented at the A.R.T./New York Mezzanine Theatre in New York from June 10 to July 2.

Nancy Sasso Janis is a member of the Connecticut Critics Circle (ctcritics.org)