Shams by Rumi

Went with almost no expectations but left with good laughs, great acting, some warm feeling of nostalgia, subtle nuances commentary through the dialogues and the value of friendship and finding yourself. Really enjoyed the story telling style, the humor and the touch of different interconnected yet so different traditions. The only thing that could improve the play is the integration of the poetic pieces. While the first recitation of poetry was smooth, the others felt more abrupt, and felt a little detached from the overall story. The tense moments, while serve the bigger story, could use smoother transition perhaps. Thoroughly enjoyed the show regardless!

Loved this show! Great story with a simple but effective premise: What would be different about your life if you changed where it happened?

The acting, technical design, and direction of this show all come together to build a world that is rich with the culture of every location it takes place in. I love how they used the design to immerse you in the nitty-gritty details of the story locations.

cleaver plot, but i lack the needed background knowledge of the culture

Shams by Rumi is sweet, different, but it needs some polishing.

With solid performances from the cast and wonderful cultural elements from the Middle-East (including dialogue in Arabic and Farsi), there's a lot to enjoy about the story that is quite unfamiliar to an Albertan audience.

However, the show is long. The script could be trimmed down and dialogue tightened to keep the pace up. Paired with a few too many long scene transitions and cues not quite on their mark, the production as a whole could have benefited from a little bit more rehearsal.

Admittedly, I am not familiar with the poets for whom this show is based upon and I found myself longing for more of that "artsy" element you can only find on a stage. To me, this show as a whole felt like it could have been a film.

Congratulations to the playwrite and performers for creating something unexpected, using a playful sweep of locations (Cairo! Tehran! Edmonton!) and some delightful tiny walk-ons to keep the story moving.

“Welcome to Egypt!”

A reimagining of the lives of ancient poets Jalal al-din Rumi and Shams Tabrizi, but instead of being two old Persian men, they are instead modern-day woman and man, meeting for the first time on Bumble. This play by Moemen Gaafar strings along a story of love from Cairo to Alexandria to Tehran to Edmonton to Persia in the 13th century. The story itself is beautifully entertaining, following Galal and Shams as their relationship slowly develops over the course of a weekend. The two leads, Brijesh Nagarathinam and Fatemeh Jelveh-Garan (playing Galal and Shams respectively) had excellent chemistry and character, balancing disagreement and admiration in a way that truly felt real.

For technical aspects of the show, there wasn’t much that really stood out, with simple lighting, simple set, and slightly too-loud microphones. What did stand out, though, was the projections. The stage featured three white screens, projected with images to show each location the characters existed in at the time. Unfortunately, some of the images were difficult to see based on how brightly the fabrics were lit, as the pictures sometimes faded into the white, but the concept itself, and the images chosen, were a great way to provide more to the world with minimal movement-heavy scene transitions.

In the end, “Shams by Rumi” is a show that explores what unites all of us as a species, not language, not religion, not a specific location – but art, food, poetry, dance, sunrises, and ultimately, love.