Actor Elan Zafir only sees his son four times a year. You will never forget this fact after you see The Unaccompanied Minor. Each time he reminded me, I could see a little bit of the pain underneath the words. And it seems that one of the ways that Mr. Zafir has chosen to process that pain is by creating a very funny and energetic one-man show about it.
There is no set and there are no props. Every scene that Zafir drew me into was created entirely through pantomime and vocal flexibility, and yet I was right there watching every last detail as though he had filmed it.
We begin with Zafir driving through horrendous traffic. The stress he is feeling is palpable. It turns out he is driving to the airport to pick up his son – whom he only sees four times a year. And of course, everything is going wrong in that way that it only can when it is exceedingly important that you be responsible and on time for something.
From there, I was launched through a journey that was part memoir, part philosophical musings, and part action movie, but all completely colored through the lens of those 9 weeks a year that he spends with his son. (Even a synopsis of the movie Rambo is somehow relevant.) How did he get here? Did he let this happen, or did it happen to him? It requires us to know his whole life to even begin to try to answer that question. But we are left without a doubt that however he ended up unable to be a part of his son’s life, it isn’t right.
We meet his family. We go to high school with him. We experience tense moments in his romantic relationships and even tenser moments in the courtroom of a custody battle. And through it all, we see him learning how to be the dedicated father he wants to be when his son spends 301 days of the year 2000 miles away.
The show is incredibly polished, and Zafir has excellent comedic timing. It is effortless for him in a way that can only come from hours of rehearsal and experimentation until the final product is just right. He becomes every character, each one a unique vocal delivery that I wished extended to a full physical embodiment as well. But it appeared to be a choice not to commit physically to the characters. At the rate he tore from one impersonation to the next, perhaps there just wasn’t time for him to fully drop into something new. But that doesn’t mean that the show wasn’t full of physicality and energy – just that at no point did Zafir ever seem to disappear from the stage, replaced with the person he was portraying. This is his story. He is always fully present. Perhaps that was the choice.
The show’s structure zings back and forth among present day with his son, present day in Christ United Methodist, and memory. It is a mix of one-liners, and then that story you’re telling a room full of people at a party, and then a one-on-one conversation he was having only with me, only to round back to a staged performance once again. Eventually Zafir works himself into a frenzy that pulls together elements of everything he has been trying to communicate for almost an hour. It’s spellbinding.
And yet, for all of the comic elements Zafir finds in his tale, don’t come expecting a funny story. It is not that. And it isn’t a perfect performance. But it is a heartfelt one, one that asks you to clutch your loved ones to you and speak the words to them that you would want to tell them on your deathbed.
Because you’re lucky they are with you. After all, Elan Zafir only gets to be with his son four times a year.
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The Unaccompanied Minor . Written and performaed by Elan Zafir . Directed by Dody Disanto . Presented at Capital Fringe 2018 . Reviewed by Alison Daniels.
Is this the same piece he did at Page to Stage at the Kennedy Center a few years ago?