By Manning Harris
fmanningh@gmail.com
The Alliance Theatre is off to a smashing opening of the 2016 season with Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Disgraced,” playing on the main stage through Feb. 14.
On Feb. 3, President Barack Obama visited a mosque for the first time (as president); that evening I attended the opening of “Disgraced,” which deals in part with Islamic-American relationships and identities. That occurrence is but one of many that have made this play timely in a way few plays seldom are.
Even the playwright, a Pakistani-American born in New York City and raised in Milwaukee, has remarked on the unintentional prescience of his 2012 play, which was always relevant, but whose themes could now be torn from the headlines of 2016. “Disgraced” is currently the most produced play in America, with 18 productions at professional theatres this season.
Mr. Akhtar modestly deflects such acclaim by pointing out: “It’s a single set; it’s five characters; it’s multiracial.” But he knows the play’s success is based on far more than that: With its exploration of Muslim-American identity issues, Islamophobia, and racial profiling, the play plunges the viewer into the heart of a emotional, intellectual maelstrom that seems exactly timed for right now.
Although totally engrossing and gripping, “Disgraced” is also intensely entertaining. Although “we swim in a sea of vitriol and uneasiness,” as Director Susan Booth comments, the audience is luxuriating in some great theatre.
We find ourselves in an exquisite Manhattan apartment where Amir (Andrew Ramcharan Guilarte) is a successful attorney, Pakistani-born (though he tells his primarily Jewish law firm he was born in India) and now a thoroughly assimilated New Yorker. His wife Emily (Courtney Patterson) is an artist, and as the curtain rises she is working on a portrait of Amir inspired by a Valazquez painting. Emily, though white and protestant, loves to point out that “Islamic art is a part of our tradition whether we know it or not.”
Even though Amir has left the Islamic faith he was raised in, in a post 9/11 world his heritage becomes increasingly inescapable. Both his nephew Abe (Ali Sohaili), also assimilated, and Emily ask Amir to aid an Islamic cleric who’s facing certain accusations. Amir doesn’t want to (“The Koran is like one long hate-mail letter to humanity”) but eventually relents.
Amir and Emily host a dinner party for Jory (Tinashe Kajese-Bolden), one of Amir’s law firm colleagues, and her husband Isaac, who happens to be a Whitney Museum curator interested in Emily’s art. He could include her work at a show at the Whitney if he wishes. He is Jewish.
Here is where I must stop with the exposition or risk being a spoiler. Suffice it to say that Newsweek didn’t put “Disgraced” in the category of the “exploding dinner party play” (like “Virginia Woolf” or “God of Carnage”) for nothing. Amir mentions that he likes to volunteer to be searched at airport security screenings. Isaac tells his wife, “That’s racial profiling.” Jory, who is African-American, says “Honey. I know what it is.”
There’s a question put to Amir that stops the play cold. You could hear a pin drop in the audience. But you’ll have to see the play. By this point the tension level is boiling—trust me.
I have nothing but praise for every aspect of this production. I think it’s the most completely realized play at the Alliance since “August: Osage County,” a much longer work, also directed by Ms. Booth. Both plays were Pulitzer winners; odd how that works. You really do start with the script.
Every actor gives an exemplary performance; my compliments and thanks. Tony Cisek’s set design is a work of art. This is the fastest 95 minutes, no intermission, you’ll spend this year.
Ultimately the play becomes a Rorschach test for not only each character but for each member of the audience. There are no easy answers here; that’s part of its brilliance.
My only complaint is the short running time of the the play—a scant three weeks. But you’ve still got time; get your tickets now.
Occasionally I’ll hear someone say, “You really must go to New York for great theatre.” Sometimes, if I’m in a haughty mood, I’ll agree with them.
But not this time. “Disgraced,” performed by the Alliance, Atlanta’s Tony-winning theatre, is first-rate in every respect.
For tickets and information, visit alliancetheatre.org.
