Though “Rangoon” concerns a family of East Indian immigrants in the rural South, it plays like a curry-flavored homage to “Death of a Salesman.”
Mayank Keshaviah’s well-meaning drama for the Pan Asian Repertory, about a family patriarch struggling to adapt to American ways, suffers from its plot contrivances and blatant borrowings.
The central character is Dhiraj, the 50-year-old manager of a 7-Eleven who’s desperate to give his children better lives than his own. Meanwhile, his college-student daughter, Tejal, is afraid to tell him that she’s dating a white classmate, while his son, Vinay, a high school underachiever, infuriates him with his irreverent greeting of “Yo, D!”
Dhiraj has a loyal wife from a long-ago arranged marriage who takes pride in her home cooking. But he finds himself tempted by the charms of one of his steady customers, a flirtatious waitress who buys suspiciously large amounts of Sudafed.
The overt nods to Arthur Miller’s play involve such characters as Dhiraj’s successful cousin, who keeps promising him the opportunity to own his own store, and the ghost of his grandfather, who pops up periodically to chide him for abandoning traditional Indian ways.
The playwright, himself the son of Indian immigrants, clearly knows the territory, and Raul Aranas’ staging has some amusing moments — the son’s impersonation of the “universal Indian head bob” and a fantasy sequence among them.
The nine-person ensemble acquits itself well, headed by Faizul Khan’s subtly moving turn as the beleaguered Dhiraj. It’s a shame their fine efforts are defeated by a melodramatic, drug-related twist that feels like piling on.