Review: Layla Khoshnoudi Fuses Personal and International in I’m Not Even Half

On a basic level, writer and performer Layla Khoshnoudi’s new solo show, I’m Not Even Half, is a 90-minute personal anecdote. Back in November 2022, S (the single-letter moniker Khoshnoudi has given herself) got hit by a car in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn and had to be taken to a hospital for treatment. She reaches out to two people while in the ambulance: Harry, a former boyfriend with whom she maintains a complicated relationship; and Julianne, a friend who S fears may have cut her off when her music career blew up. And yet it’s Julianne, not Harry, who responds to her text and meets her at the hospital. This reconnection, however, exposes many other skeletons in their respective closets when Julianne eventually reveals not only that she hooked up with Harry after he and S had broken up, but that the sexual encounter may not have been entirely consensual.

The introspection and eventual confrontation with Harry that follows this revelation will especially resonate in light of the ongoing controversy surrounding the lawsuit belatedly filed against the Cornell 7. But though Khoshnoudi doesn’t mention this recent case in her play, she does prominently mention another, more global case of violence against women: the death of Mahsa Amini in September 2022 while Iran’s morality police held her in custody for allegedly not wearing a hijab as per the country’s mandatory dress code for women. The mysterious death led to a slew of protests, all of which S, herself Iranian, obsessively follows on social media from afar. In fact, it was while she was glued to her phone watching a video of the protests that she was hit by the car accidentally backing into her.

Given her cultural identity, it’s no surprise that S is deeply affected by the way these women back in her home country took to the streets and risked their own lives to fight for their independence. (The show’s title refers to a line late in the play when she states that she’s fully Iranian, “not even half.”) But when she gradually learns about the depth of Harry’s own predatory ways with women, she begins to angrily reflect on how, despite living in the comparative freedom of the United States, she still carries an ingrained patriarchal perspective and allowed herself to be taken in by someone who becomes a bastion of toxic masculinity.

It’s certainly worth reminding audiences of how much progress still has yet to be made when it comes to how American society at large handles sexual assault (the #MeToo movement seems to have cratered in recent years). Plus, it’s admirable that Khoshnoudi maintains her focus on the personal in I’m Not Even Half, allowing her point to emerge organically from the play and her performance instead of lapsing into didacticism.

But her writing is baggy enough that it doesn’t always escape the feeling of bearing witness to a self-indulgent navel-gazing session. And despite her own fully Iranian lineage and her attempts at self-flagellation for her privilege, she fails to make a convincing case that S’s own platonic and romantic struggles deserve to be viewed on the same level as the genuine life-or-death stakes facing all those Iranian women in attempting to start a revolution out in the streets.

As a performer, Khoshnoudi has often been a lively scene-stealing presence, with memorable performances in Dance Nation and Georgia Mertching Is Dead (I fondly remember her performance in, of all things, a family puppet show at the Tank called Simon and His Shoes back in 2022). She shows plenty of that energy playing a horny, neurotic, thoughtful young professional while commanding a sparsely designed stage. Based on the way she occasionally struggles to differentiate characters in I’m Not Even Half, though, the kind of chameleonic skill that makes solo performers like Anna Deavere Smith, Dael Orlandersmith, and Sarah Jones indispensable, isn’t quite in her repertory yet.

Director Machel Ross makes a valiant attempt to infuse the proceedings with some theatrical flair. A wall with a large circle at the center vertically bisects the Bushwick Starr stage in Emmie Finckel’s scenic design, with Khoshnoudi starting behind it for a brief prologue before crossing the threshold to begin her story. Lighting designer Cheyenne Sykes has placed multicolored lights to the left and right of that wall to punctuate certain particularly lively moments, which Christopher Darbassie emphasizes with some discreet sound design. But as with similar solo shows, Khoshnoudi herself is the main attraction, one that offers a better showcase for her gifts as a performer than as a writer.