Headscarf and the Angry Bitch by Zehra Fazal

Remaining Performances:
Jul 17th at 8:30 p.m.
Jul 18th at 3:30 p.m.

They say: “Join Zed Headscarf on a tongue-in-cheek romp through faith and growing up Muslim in America. Featuring hits like ‘The Only Thing I’ll Do Five Times a Day is You’ and ‘I Lost My Virginity During Ramadan.’ This beef ain’t halal!”

Mike’s take: The future of American-Islamic relations could hinge on this one-woman show. Before Muslim folk-rocker Zed Headscarf (Zehra Fazal) got involved, America’s most memorable depictions of Islam were a.) Lil Kim sporting a hijab and not much else on the cover of One World and b.) that episode of Southpark wherein the boys travel to Afghanistan to return a mail-order goat to its starving family. (And to kill Osama bin Laden, who, in the words of Cartman, “has a small penis.”) No wonder those pious clerics up and declared America’s objectification of women and obsession with dick jokes as deserving of–dare I say it?–jihad! Zed Headscarf, infidel-licking lesbian though she be, really could change all that.

After strummbling through a spotlit ballad about the displeasures of navigating airport security in Muslim garb, Headscarf introduces herself to her fake/real audience as the new employee of a generic-sounding Islamic cultural group whose job it is to talk up the Good Kitab on a tri-county lecture circuit (her first!). Lesson no. 1 is that Fazal, who disappears offstage after her introduction and returns with a dusty Koran that she blows off to nervous laughter, has no intentions of skirting the controversy that defined her 2007 show, My Friend Hitler.

Lesson no. 2 introduces the tension that Fazal whips out whenever Headscarf’s Inside Islam jokes fall flat: Haraam vs. Halal, the bizarre dichotomy that continues to frame the experiences of so many Muslim-American women.

Headscarf defines haraam as something bad, sinful, or unclean, and contextualizes it thusly: “Dude, it wasn’t kosher when you gave my mom a rimjob–that was haraam.” She defines halal as something appropriate, or prepared in accordance with Islamic law, though in all fairness, it’s really just a catch-all for the fun things that would make a jihadist happy if only he could get his mind–and mouth–around a fuzzy navel. (The use-it-in-a-sentence example for halal is much better when Headscarf says it.)

The show is broken up into lectures, at the end of which Headscarf invites her audience to return to the next lecture, and the stage goes dark. When the lights come up seconds later, Headscarf has the look of well, a Muslim woman who has just been scolded by her imam for talking about how much she loves eating pussy. The pattern of apology, diversion, song, and escalation to obscenity provides an easy and enjoyable sense of structure. Due to the close quarters of the Warehouse and my propensity for sweating, however, I can say that 55 minutes may have been 10 minutes too long for me. It’s tight in there, after all, and an hour is just long enough to recognize, applaud, and then tire of Fazal’s affinity for repetition.

Fans of dramatic one-person shows be warned: Headscarf and the Angry Bitch borrows liberally from narrative standup comedy, and much less so from, uh, people who do really serious one-person plays–almost to the point that I forgot I was watching theatre. If she could only trim some of the dead weight from her script and learn how to play that acoustic guitar that she’s always wailing on, Fazal and her show–dark and stormy social commentary included–wouldn’t be out of place on Comedy Central. Like Maria Bamford without the pugs or Zach Galifianakis without the leotard.

See it if: You want to hear someone sing about Pakistani papas bemoaning their daughter’s sexual orientation to the tune of Smooth Criminal.

Skip it if: You are a terrorist.

Not without its highlights, though, and certainly replete with the requisite Fringe-isms. Fake breasts? Check. Um, more fake breasts? Double-check. Duplicitous robots from space? Indeed. Desultory allusions to Beckett, Wilde, Shakespeare, et al. wielded with the weight of a French tickler? Duh.

Below the jump, a telegraphic rundown on last night’s 23 previews.

Deep breath!~ Here we go:

• Let’s Sing Gospel 101!, in which the magnanimous Rosita Mathews induces her mainly white audience to shout, stomp, clap, and otherwise make a joyful noise.
• Uncorseted, a gender-bender purportedly relating to the 1893 World’s Fair. Lots of gents wearing wigs & padded bras, prancing about and “dueling” with plastic swords. Expect as much phallic wordplay as phallic swordplay.
• Headscarf and the Angry Bitch: A woman, a hijab, a guitar, and an innocuously irreverent song cycle about “growing up Muslim in America.” The humor seems to revolve around Pakistan, Facebook, and goats.
• Captain Squishy’s Yee Haw Jamboree (the musical): The gentlefolk behind last year’s smash I Like Nuts! (the musical) return to Fringe with a tale about a Country & Western variety show and the WWI German agent who infiltrates it to spread sedition and funny accents.
• Lila: The Love Story of Radha and Krishna: Entrancingly programmatic classical Indian dance.
• Missing Pages: A daughter uncovers her father’s war diary and past as a WWII spy. Vietnam, Iraq parallels.
• Krapp’s Last Powerpoint: Promising title; no apparent relation to its Beckett namesake. (Unless you count the whole one-man-alone-with-audience-and-memory thing.) Also, faith-healing seems to be involved.
• Riding the Bull: Something about a rodeo clown, Godsburg, TX, and a handful of giggle-worthy pop culture references. Also, original banjo tunes from “New York City’s Angriest Yodeling Banjo Player.”
• She Moved Through the Fair: One-woman show; reminiscences of a brandy-swilling Irish lass delivered in a soupy brogue.
• Irish Authors Held Hostage: Another black comedy from Martin McDonagh? Nope—just a historical mash-up, in which the usual cast of Irish men o’ letters (Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, &c.) get kidnapped by terrorists “of every stripe.” Last night’s short—Oscar Wilde taken captive by Al Qaeda—had the audience (rightfully) in stitches.
• Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, in which Nu Sass Productions cuts Stoppard’s fringe darling down to an 85-minute, all-women adaptation. Ambitious—and, if the preview’s any indicator, ripe for chaos.
• SOUP!, an all-in-the-timing series of comedy shorts. Wednesday’s excerpt—a dysfunctional husband-wife cooking show—split some serious sides.
• MAY 39TH/40TH, a tale from the future (the yr. 3009, to be precise), in which the more things change (lots of clones) the more things stay the same (dating “still blows chunks”).
• Please Listen: A Musical Chaos: This year’s rock & roll spectacle. Two musicians kidnap a record exec and assault his ears with their opus—a concept album about duplicitous robots from space.

OK, at this point in last night’s proceedings there was a mandatory beer break. Given the feat-of-endurance nature of this post, I’d recommend the same thing here.

Back? Good.

• Bare Breasted Women Sword Fighting: Wait, didn’t we just hear about this? Ah…this one involves actual women, who dance, wrestle, and—yes—duel, all in the name of “vaudeville.” Also, if we’re to believe the hype, there’s actual toplessness. If, y’know, you’re into that sort of thing.
• My Fabulous Sex Life: Confessions of a gay man’s sexual awakening in D.C. Funny; brash; almost inconceivably explicit.
• Slow News Day: Able, audience-participatory improvisation about TV news. If you delight in such things, this one is a no-brainer.
• Herbie: Poet of the Wild West: A totally irreverent take on Hamlet that involves eye-patches and six-shooters. Also, since it’s Fringe, a token lesbian cowgirl.
• The Escapades of Farty Johnson: OK, I’m gonna go out on a limb here. This was the most thrilling four minutes of the entire program. I have no idea whether there’s a plot (if there is, it seems to revolve around a delusional woman auditioning for an unsympathetic director). Farty (or, as she called herself onstage, “Toots…because girls don’t fart”) apparently specializes in an offbeat quadrille that somehow communicates deep sadness while keeping the audience in stitches. Can it sustain over the full 45 minutes? Who knows. But if Patricia Krauss wasn’t the most gifted physical comedian in the room last night, that’s only because David Gaines was sitting in the back.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: A Collection of One-Acts: Asks the question, “Can’t murder be innocent?” Looks for answers in ways Dostoevskyan (”Dude, let’s kill a homeless guy!”) and otherwise.
• The Real Adventures of Tom Mix: Based on the “real-life” adventures of the early-Western film star, this seems to boil down to a lot of monologues delivered from under the brim of a major-league Stetson.
• Jack, The Ticket Ripper: Slasher-farce about an overenthusiastic usher who goes all Titus Andronicus on playwrights, bartenders, and pretty much everyone else.
• Pepe! The Mail Order Monkey Musical: Two understimulated brothers order a mail-order monkey, throwing a wrench into the machinations of their social-climbin’ mother.

But what did you think? Let us know in the comments.

Selah.