First produced in the United States last year, Ayad Akhtar’s debut play Disgraced recently won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, which was fortuitous timing for the Bush Theatre, who had already won the right to stage the British premiere.
The play caused a bit of a stir in New York, a witty examination of the post-9/11 clash of civilizations, in which people become polarized by their racial, religious and cultural loyalties. And with the terrible events in Woolwich happening on the same day as opening night here, it inevitably offers British audiences much food for thought too.
At the start of the play everything seems rosy for Amir Kapoor, a Pakistani-born but fully Americanized corporate lawyer in New York, with high hopes of becoming a partner in his firm and in love with his artist wife Emily, whose work is influenced by Islamic art. Although Amir has turned his back on his Muslim roots, she and his young nephew Abe persuade him to speak out for the rights of an imam charged with supporting terrorism. The latent tensions come boiling to the surface during a dinner party in their plush Upper East Side apartment, with their guests Isaac, a Jewish art museum curator exhibiting Emily’s work, and his African-American wife Jory, a legal colleague of Amir, when civilized conversation breaks down into violent confrontation.
Akhtar certainly has his finger on the pulse in this intense drama of the conflicts of multicultural identity, liberal secularism, fundamentalist faith, career rivalry and adultery. The play may seem a bit schematic in the way the ethnic profiles of the main characters are so neatly quartered, but Disgraced is more than a dramatised debate of different points of view. What is impressive is the convincing depiction of how a group of seemingly open-minded cosmopolitans revert to atavistic and tribal attitudes, over a meal of fennel anchovy salad and distinctly non-halal/non-kosher pork tenderloin.
Nadia Fall directs the show tightly, allowing the humour to come through but gradually increasing the tension as the contradictions within and divisions between the characters become more apparent, and Jamie Todd’s design of a smart flat with shelves of art books and Westernized Islamic artwork sets the scene well.
Hari Dhillon gives a tremendous performance as the apparently assimilated Amir, giving a persuasive account of how his denial of his own background and suppressed anger lead to trouble, while Kirsty Bushell also impresses as the well-meaning but naïve Emily. There is good support from Nigel Whitmey playing the smugly condescending Isaac and Sara Powell as the upfront, feisty Jory. And as Abe, Danny Ashok shows us an amiable young man becoming radicalized, in an ominous sign for the future.
Read the Exeunt interview with director Nadia Fall.
