A deserted pier is a good place to sit and feel lonely and a great opening scene for Epic Theatre Ensemble’s Mahida’s Extra Key to Heaven (written by Russell Davis) at the Signature Theatre’s Peter Norton Space.  Fortunately, our lonely main character Mahida gets some company after a while in the form of Thomas, a self-proclaimed disheveled and overly talkative artist.

Initially Thomas does all the talking, but after a while Mahida comes out of her shell and gets of her seat in an attempt to ask whether the ferry will come. The ferry, it seems, is the reason she was sitting on a bench in the middle of the night in the cold. Mahida was sitting on the bench for a while because her brother, Ramin left her there after a fight. For a while, Thomas and Mahida talk about everything from Wyoming to philosophical infinity and ending in where she will stay for the night. Thomas subtly offers his mother’s couch for the night.

The next morning she wakes with a fright when Thomas ‘ mother, Edna, finds her on the couch. No worries, she’s all right with guests.  Unfortunately she doesn’t know enough to shut up about things she doesn’t understand. She has a lot to say about the Middle East after hearing that Mahida is from Iran. Some of her enlightened statements include, “Oh a madrasa, is that where they learn to make car bombs?” and “Mixing cultures is a bad thing”, and last but not least ”It’s alright we’ll wait for you to play catch up.” Well that was smooth. Luckily, Thomas comes back for breakfast and then He and Mahida go for a walk around the island where Edna lives. It turns out, Mahida came to America to study literature after her father sent her, but Daddy died and now Ramin thinks he has to be the man of the house and came to bring Mahida back to Iran.

What happens next is the last thing you would ever expect to happen to a disheveled artist/philosopher, Iranian transfer student and said artist’s mother. All I’ll say is that it was the perfect ending for a play that took us through the meeting of two cultures and showed us, not the political or economic, but the personal side of things, the only one that really matters, which it did very well.