Nehal Joshi as Amir, with Joe Isenberg, Felicia Curry and Ivy Vahanian. Photo: C. Stanley Photography.
Playwright Ayad Akhtar is having a moment in D.C. Theater subscribers may be accustomed to seeing two or more Shakespeare plays being staged at once in the area, but it’s rare to be able to see simultaneous stagings of a living playwright’s work.
The productions in question will overlap for less than a week, but for a few days this month, two local theaters will present works written by Akhtar. The Who & The What opens May 25 at Bethesda’s Round House Theatre; meanwhile, the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Disgraced is already up and running at Arena Stage in Southwest D.C. Audiences who see one will almost certainly want to check out the other.
Fresh, crisp, clean, and poignant, Akhtar’s writing carries Disgraced from beginning to end. With no intermission, the play zips from curtain time to final bows faster than protagonist Amir (Nehal Joshi) can pour himself another scotch. A Pakistani-American who renounced Islam years ago, Amir passes as Indian in his top-tier Jewish law firm. When his artist wife Emily (Ivy Vahanian) convinces him to help a jailed imam, his assumed identity and successful home and work life begin to disintegrate.
DCist interviewed director Timothy Douglas while the show was still in production. Douglas says his biggest challenge was finding an actor of Middle Eastern descent to play the lead role, “who one, has the experience, the chops to perform this role—this is no less demanding than someone playing Hamlet—and then I have this personal thing,” he says. “With a play like this, I didn’t want to cast an actor who’s done the role before.”
Although the play was first performed in 2012, it’s been so popular that Douglas really might have had several actors to choose from who’ve already been in Amir’s very expensive shoes. With 18 different theaters presenting it nationwide, Disgraced is the most-produced play of the 2015-2016 season.
Douglas succeeded in his search by casting Joshi. At first confident, calm, and cool, Joshi’s Amir seems like a guy you’d encounter in a luxury suite at a Capitals game. Sure, the upper class yuppie isn’t completely relatable in his $600 custom tailored shirts with their “ridiculous thread count,” but he is affable and charming. You can have a beer with him, he’ll just likely drink his out of the glass.
As the play continues, however, Joshi expertly and almost imperceptibly strips his character of his outgoing attitude and dials up his proclivity for confrontation. With each passing minute and sip of Glenlivet, Amir’s stress over strained work relationships erodes his collected, carefully balanced exterior.
In the ultimate dinner party gone wrong, Amir undergoes a transformation. Inexcusable behavior is at least understandable, and once the shock wears off, the audience can only be mildly surprised by the turn of events. Stoked mostly by long-simmering anger, the ignorance of those around him, and a few nasty surprises, the embodiment of the American dream turns nightmarish.
The first two scenes take place in late summer of 2011, in Amir and Emily’s swanky and spacious Manhattan apartment. Beautifully designed by Tony Cisek, the set is modern and chic with a chandelier, sparse decorations, and a single, large painting in the living room. One of Emily’s best pieces, the geometric, Islamic-inspired painting is a fitting centerpiece.
The production provides both biting social commentary on blind privilege and a fresh perspective on Islamic culture and its contributions to modern society. Naive, but well-intentioned, Emily’s muse is her husband’s culture, which he tries in earnest to push away.
“The beautiful thing about the play is it brings up how much culture is part of who we are,” says Ivy Vahanian, who plays Emily. This becomes clear as the play progresses. With a pork tenderloin heating in the oven, the dinner guests—Muslim, Jewish, and gentile—spar over Israel, Iran, the Quran, racism, and 9/11. There is a sense that neither assimilation nor cultural appropriation can fully strip us of our roots, however deep they may lie.
The five-person cast represents a diverse group of characters. In addition to married couple Emily and Amir, there is Amir’s nephew, Pakistani-born Abe (Samip Raval), who struggles between his American and South Asian identities. We soon meet massively pretentious Jewish-American art curator Isaac (Joe Isenberg), and his wife Jory (Felicia Curry), an African-American lawyer who has pulled herself up from poverty to a place of prestige within Amir’s firm. Jory and Amir have more than their careers and intercultural marriages in common. They both had to overcome societal obstacles to get to where they are.
Douglas says he’s constantly reminding the actors that they don’t have to work too hard in certain moments. “It’s going to be done for you, and then you can ride it into the next moment,” he says he tells the cast. “I think it’s the only way we’re going to hear the dialogue. If the actors get too involved in it, it becomes possible for the listener to dismiss certain uncomfortable topics.”
It’s this careful direction and delivery that gives audiences a lot to think about. Raval says he hopes audiences leave feeling the way the characters do in the play: conflicted. “They’re leaving with a lot of questions; they don’t leave with answers,” he says. “You kind of ask the question: well, what happens to them next?”
Whether or not Disgraced can change how Americans view these serious topics is tough to call, but the production does provide a worthwhile exploration into identity and fear.
Disgraced runs through May 29 at Arena Stage at The Mead Center for American Theater. Tickets, $65-110, are available online
