![\"Shams](\"https://smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital/edmontonjournal/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/shams_304763397.jpg\" "\\"Shams")
Shams by Rumi
4 Stars out of 5
Stage 1, ATB Westbury Theatre, Fringe Theatre Arts Barns, 10330 84 Ave.
Time, geography, and several laws of dramatic physics are left by the wayside in Moemen Gaafar’s Shams by Rumi.
Galal (Brijesh Nagarathinam) and Husam (Ram Gill) are a playwright-director team in Cairo, theoretically there to secure their big break. But Galal (who insists on being addressed by his pen name, Rumi) is focused on his phone, where he’s being messaged by Shams, an Iranian woman he’s met through Bumble. They meet, they talk, and then, because apparently Cairo is not enough and Shams (Fatemeh Jelveh-Garan) wants to see what Galal can imagine as a writer, they run off on a delirious trip through Alexandria, Tehran, and Edmonton.
They squabble, flirt a little, run from cafes, watch dervishes in the marketplace, exchange personal histories. Like Before Sunset, it’s the day (in this case two days) that won’t end, though it necessarily has to. This isn’t a romance, though it has romantic elements, it’s more of an intense connection that both know they’ll never have again.
Shams by Rumi is an amiable re-envisioning of the relationship between the legendary Persian poets Rumi and Shams Tabrizi, who in real life was male. Not quite a rom-com (a term Galal/Rumi clearly hates), definitely not a historical drama, Gaafar’s play is more like a rumination on poetry and friendship. It’s also quite entertaining, and knowledge of the poets or the milieu isn’t necessary for enjoyment.