Friday March 29, 2024
DISGRACED
Review

DISGRACED

April 23 2016

DISGRACED, Sydney Theatre Company at Wharf 1, 16 April-4 June 2016, followed by Wollongong, Parramatta and Canberra. Photography by Prudence Upton - above: Sachin Joab, Paula Arundel, Sophie Ross and Glenn Hazeldine. Right: Sachin Joab and Shiv Palekar

Although of Pakistani descent, novelist-playwright and actor Ayad Akhtar had the good fortune to be born on Staten Island and then move to the Mid-West. His parents were a cardiologist (father) and radiologist (mother) so his upbringing was comfortably middle class and secular. Nevertheless, the perils and quandaries of being a Muslim (or perceived as a Muslim) in post-9/11 USA clearly preoccupy him. And why would they not?

Akhtar’s US birth puts him in a slightly more secure place than the main protagonists of his critically successful novel American Dervish (2012) and 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning play Disgraced. Both explore the everyday for young Muslim men in 21st century America and while they predate Donald Trump’s “presidential” campaign, it is because of Trump’s infamous “birther” pursuit of Barack Obama and his current anti-Muslim “7/11” rhetoric that Disgraced is particularly topical for audiences in the USA and elsewhere.

Amir (Sachin Joab) is a successful Manhattan corporate lawyer who is aiming 120 billable hours a week firmly at a partnership in his Jewish law firm. His wife Emily (Sophie Ross) is also successful: an artist whose career is about to seriously take off. But all is not well in their elegant Upper Eastside apartment (design Elizabeth Gadsby, lighting Damien Cooper). 

Although their animosity is muted and possibly even unconscious, Amir and Emily clash along cultural and political lines. Amir is a determined and articulate apostate while Emily is drawn to Islamic art and its history, incorporating its inspirations into her work. She also does the opposite in an adroit scene wherein, despite his reluctance, she has Amir posing for a portrait. It's a contemporary version of Velasaquez’sJuan de Pareja”. Does she not see there might be something racist at worst, patronising at best in having her husband substitute for the Moor who was also an indentured servant? Apparently not.

Moreover, the gulf in understanding between the two becomes a chasm when his younger brother Abe (Shiv Palekar) turns up seeking his professional help. Abe – born Hussein but has, like his elder brother,  adopted a less inflammatory name – is assisting a local imam who’s been accused of fund-raising for terrorism. Amir doesn’t want to know and only relents when Emily begs him, guilt trips him. That grudging decision and a disastrous dinner party, some months later, will cost him. 

Invited to the dinner is Jory (Paula Arundell), an equally high-flying lawyer and a friend and colleague of Amir’s. She’s there with her husband, their mutual friend and Whitney curator Isaac (Glenn Hazeldine). He breaks the much-anticipated news that Emily has been chosen to be part of a trio to exhibit at the hallowed art museum.

However, the dinner party turns out to be an IED and the collateral damage is not easily predictable, which is entertaining in its own way. Akhtar’s play runs for just 90 minutes but packs in some mighty themes and punches along the way. Each of the characters reveals twists, turns and contradictions in their beliefs and actions and thus confound the probably middle class, liberal expectations of the majority of their audiences (here and in the USA where it was apparently the most performed play last year).

DISGRACED

Directed by Sarah Goodes, the production is clear and uncluttered, serving the text and the actors to advantage. Nevertheless, Disgraced is a play where scene changing and prop redistribution by members of the cast dissipates the carefully built pace and tension time and again, which is a pity. At the same time, the performances of the five are very good. 

Whatever she's does on a stage, Paula Arundell is rarely less than riveting. As the African-American lawyer with the sharp eye and sharper tongue, she is the source of beautifully timed laughs as well as an undercurrent of real politik

As the lawyer who can wear US$600 shirts without blinking, Sachin Joab is a revelation on his STC debut. He brings elegance and humanity to Amir and his blurted confession of socially unacceptable thoughts is convincing. Similarly, in a small but telling part, Shiv Palekar as the younger brother who gives up “Abe” for a crisp white taqiyah is also at home with his story and his place on Wharf I’s stage.

Sophie Ross has to contend with the least three-dimensional part as Emma but again, makes her human and credible, despite her unreconstructed WASPishness. And Glenn Hazeldine balances somewhere between Woody Allen and Neil Simon in his ease with some of the wittiest dialogue, yet he’s also a persuasive, flawed creature of flesh and blood. 

The immensity of the play’s ideas and questions and the volatility of their currency ought to mean more and greater shocks than those that occur. And as the biggest revelations are personal (marital) rather than political, there is a sense of cop-out as the lights go down across Central Park for the last time.

Disgraced is one of the STC’s hottest-selling shows of the 2016 season which suggests a hunger for meaty and topical drama. It doesn’t come more so than this play, but whether people go home to argue around dinner tables – in Manhattan, Mosman or Paddo – probably depends on whether they choose to overlook the final fizzer. 

 

 

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