Review: 'Disgraced' wades through social turbulence

Saturday night theater audiences are usually a gregarious bunch. It’s hard to know exactly what it is. A couple of preshow drinks, perhaps. Or maybe it’s that there’s no work the next day.

But after Saturday night’s performances of “Disgraced” at the Playhouse in the Park, the audience was eerily silent. It’s not that they disliked the performance – they stood during the lengthy applause.

More likely is that they were stunned by the savagery of the final 15 minutes of Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize Award-winning play.

Long before the cast takes to the stage, Brian Sidney Bembridge’s set and Ray Nardelli’s sound design set an emotionally chilly mood. Not a thing is out of place in this over-priced Manhattan apartment. It has less warmth than a well-designed hotel room. Equally detached is the jazz that plays in the background. It’s neat and ordered and immaculately constructed. But there is nothing personal about any of this. Or, on second thought, maybe this is what personal feels like to this well-connected, high-powered couple. Perhaps chilly is as good as it gets here.

Amir (Barzin Akhavan) is a corporate lawyer, a guy who specializes in mergers and acquisitions. In his eyes, he’s destined for a senior partnership with his name one the firm. Never mind that he was raised a Muslim and that most of the firm’s senior management are all Jews. Amir abandoned his faith decades ago. He is as secular as they come.

But is wife, a white American named Emily (Bethany Jillard), is a painter obsessed with the power of Islamic art. Where Amir has turned his back on Islam, she has become consumed with it.

Their relationship is unsettled but mostly peaceful. But then Akhtar tosses Amir’s cousin Abe (Amin El Gamal) into the mix. Abe has changed his name from Hussein – life is easier with a “normal” name. When a favorite imam is thrown in jail for allegedly raising money for terrorist groups, Abe asks Amir to speak with him. “He’d be more comfortable if there was a Muslim on the case, too,” he tells Amir.

Even though Amir wants nothing to do with the imam, this sets into motion a series of events that brings a myriad of age-old stereotypes and hostilities to the surface. By the time the play ends, Amir, Emily and a pair of dinner guests – Amir’s savvy colleague Jory (Krystel Lucas) and her curator husband Isaac (Maury Ginsberg) – have waded into a slew of hot-button issues we’re told to avoid in public. They battle over religion and fidelity, they hurl accusations of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. They betray one another’s friendships and marriages.

It is harrowing to watch it all unfold.

Clearly, this is not a light evening’s entertainment. But it’s not just the high emotion that sets it apart. It’s the intellectual territory that Akhtar’s script wades through. These are very, very smart people, after all. You might even call them erudite. Idle conversations wander from Andalusian mosaics to the failings of the New York Knicks, from the paintings of John Constable to the philosophy of Ernest Becker. This is heady stuff. But for all this wordiness, it’s also a remarkably quick 80 minutes of theater.

“Disgraced” isn’t a play that aims to answer questions. Indeed, you’re likely to find yourself replaying scene after scene for days to come. When things go badly for Amir, is it because he’s a Muslim or because he’s so brash and cock-sure? Is it because he’s a man trapped between incompatible cultures or is he just an aggressive lawyer in a $600 shirt?

And Abe. Is the discrimination he feels real? Or is the imam taking advantage of the everyday insecurities of a teenager? Are his experiences genuine or is be being radicalized?

Director Lisa Portes leads her cast through this intellectual minefield ever-so-gingerly. Just when we think we have a firm hold on who’s the good guy and who’s not, Portes steers us away from the easy answers.

“Disgraced” is trim and concise script – a little like Amir and Emily’s apartment. There’s not a word out of place. But hidden away just under the surface of all that order is a maze of emotional and social turbulence. Portes and her superb cast slowly peel away that veneer of civility and lead us into a place where even the best of us give way to our ugliest and most primal tendencies.

This is not an evening of theater that is likely to leave anyone who sees it feeling very settled. But then, the Playhouse’s tiny Shelterhouse theater has long been a place for us daring enough to wander inside to exercise our intellects and to ask the hard questions of life. “Disgraced” is a perfect fit.

“Disgraced” continues through Oct. 23 at the Playhouse in the Park.

Email davidlyman@gmail.com.