Disgraced, the 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, has been revived at the Mark Taper Forum in a powerful but flawed production. Repeating director Kimberly Senior has assembled a strong cast but allowed some of its actors–mostly the women–to swallow their words at key moments. Their inaudibility spoiled much of the play for this critic. Ayad Akhtar’s drama is rooted in the ongoing ideological debate over radical Islam. Its key characters are Amir (Hari Dhillon), a wealthy Pakistani-American corporate lawyer, his artist wife Emily (Emily Swallow), and two of their friends: Isaac (J. Anthony Crane) and his wife Jory (Karen Pittman). Behzad Dabu plays Amir’s nephew. Isaac, a progressive Jew, is an art dealer hoping to show Emily’s latest work, paintings inspired by Islamic models. Jory is an ambitious lawyer in Amir’s firm. The action that triggers the series of confrontation scenes at the heart of Disgraced is Amir’s angry response to a New York Times story regarding an imam accused of aiding terrorists. The story implied that Amir was sympathetic to the imam’s radical cause, despite his always identifying himself as a secular, emancipated Muslim. At a dinner party in Amir’s elegant Manhattan apartment, the pro-Palestinian Isaac questions Amir’s anti-Muslim stance. Alcohol fuels their acrimonious debate, which heats up as the wives weigh in with their conflicting views. Emily, who romanticizes Islam, lashes out at her husband; Jory (who is African-American) attacks her own spouse, as well, for his naive defense of the Arab cause. Further compounding the loud squabble is a sexual revelation: an affair between Isaac and Emily. That freaks Amir out and causes him to attack Isaac with his fists, not words. The youthful Abe figures in the action, too, taking up the cause of radical Islam because an FBI agent dared to question him. The strength of Disgraced lies in the three-dimensional way its characters are drawn: dogmatic as they are, they are also complicated and conflicted–human beings and not just figureheads. It’s just too bad I couldn’t hear everything they had to say.
