“Disgraced” is a punch in the face at Farmers Alley
KALAMAZOO–Further confirmation that our political climate is beyond horrifying is the strange relief one feels after seeing the Pulitzer-prize winning drama Disgraced currently at Farmers Alley Theatre. This 90-minute one-act play is like a punch in the face you know you deserve.
There are five characters in this tightly-drawn, elegantly-structured play that focuses on Amir, a mergers and acquisitions lawyer about to make partner and apostate to his Muslim roots who shares a tasteful upper East Side apartment with Emily, his up-and-coming artist WASP wife whose work is inspired by the “wisdom and beauty in the Islamic tradition.” Theirs appears to be an utterly privileged, cushy life, full of upward mobility, dinner parties, and intellectually-stimulating conversation. The improbably American Dream.
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Playwright Ayad Akhtar’s carefully-placed plot points build to a frenetic crisis; just at the moment all the marginally-interesting clever banter and inevitable posturing becomes intolerable, the thrilling action takes over without losing nuance and complexity.
The heart of the play is Amir’s conflict: though he rejects Islam and his Muslim identity to the point of changing his name to one that is Punjabi, in a post-9/11 world, he cannot escape it.
He comes to a breaking point during a scotch-fueled dinner party with another couple who come with their own racial and ethnic baggage. Jory, Amir’s colleague at the firm, is African-American; and Isaac, a Jew, is curating Emily’s first show. The discussion quickly turns from the fennel and anchovy salad to the peculiar parallels Isaac sees between Mormonism and Islam.
“You keep saying that like it means something,” Amir says to him. “You don’t get it.” “Don’t get what? That you’re self-loathing?” Isaac retorts.
What’s going on here is deeply meaningful, and from there it gets uglier and more real with personal betrayal that adds layers of pain to the complication of his identity within the larger political context. Amir’s duplicitousness and self-hatred escalate as do his frightening revelations and actions.
And yet, through it all, he inspires compassion, largely because of actor Damien Seperi’s warmth and underplaying the role. It’s a crucial counterpoint to Kate Thomsen’s upward inflection and over enunciation, which detracts from an otherwise rich portrayal of an archetypal self-righteous liberal white woman, trying so hard to do the right thing but succumbing to an inevitable and largely self-created demise. Their relationship is both symbolic and deeply felt.
Bianca Washington is a commanding Jory, and Mitchell Koory’s Isaac shows sophisticated change. And one of the strongest performances comes from Joey Vahedi as Abe, Amir’s assimilated nephew who undergoes a profound transformation with minimal support from the script. His emotional shifts are raw and convincing.
Dan Guyette makes use of a raked stage to create the interior of Amir and Emily’s posh apartment that is more reminiscent of the late 1980’s than 2011, though the neon-lined crown molding in addition to the dramatic slant of the stage is slightly disorienting, appropriately mirroring the emotion of the play with interesting choices from George Eric Perry’s lighting design.
Director D. Terry Williams is in his element with a script like this; the tales he loves to tell are those that are important, impactful, and thought-provoking. It’s this kind of theater at this moment in time that shows us what it can do—how it can inspire us to think and converse more deeply than public discourse would otherwise invite. It raises real and difficult questions we desperately need to address, perhaps now more than ever.