Letters of Suresh

Second Stage has started its Off-Broadway season with Letter of Suresh, Rajiv Joseph’s companion play to his Animals Out of Paper. This is one of those plays where the characters speak directly to the audience throughout without any direct interaction and the plot revolves around the convention of a series of total strangers pouring their hearts out to each other in letters.

After a chance encounter in Nagasaki at the memorial site to victims of the atomic bomb, a Japanese priest and a genius-level polymath American of East Indian heritage (Suresh of the title), begin writing to each other. The chain of correspondence also eventually includes Suresh’s ex-girlfriend Amelia and Melody, the grand-niece of a Korean monk who has come into possession of the letters.

There’s a lot of interesting talk about faith, love, and science, but it’s very hard to care about these characters because they all seem so removed from us and each other. At one point, almost out of nowhere, Suresh suddenly announces he has been using his vast intelligence to create nuclear weapons and he feels just awful about it. Huh?

Kamiz Monsef (Suresh), Ali Ahn (Melody), Kellie Overbey (Amelia), and especially Thom Sesma (Father Hasimoto) all deliver moving performances in director May Adrales’s pleasing-enough production, but these Letters are not particularly worth a visit.