Like the current Broadway revival of Doubt, Itamar Moses’s new play The Ally at the Public Theater, offers no comfortable, clear-cut resolutions to the difficult questions it poses. It also presents varying and articulate responses to its central question and allows the audience to decide the best outcome—if any.
The play does have a plethora of long speeches and can sometimes resemble a debate rather than a drama. Characters occasionally seem like representatives of their espoused beliefs rather than flesh-and-blood people. But the talk is so detailed and stimulating, The Ally’s flaws pale in comparison to its strengths. With a passionate yet never overplaying cast and understated direction from Lila Neugebauer, this is among the strongest, most politically conscious works currently playing on or Off-Broadway.
Moses examines numerous issues of social import, but the central one involves the state of Israel and its policy towards the Palestinians. Set in a contemporary college campus in New York, The Ally asks how far one should go in the name of supporting persecuted minorities even when you disagree with their actions in order to gain equity. Writing professor Asaf (a thoughtful, funny and intense Josh Radnor) is asked to sign a radical progressive manifesto by Baron, one of his African-America students (Elijah Jones in a strong turn displaying contained anger and questing intellect), whose cousin has been killed at the hands of the police. One of the many paragraphs in the document calls Israel’s policy towards Gaza and the West Bank “apartheid” and uses the phrase genocide to describe their Palestinian policy. All these plot tracks clash in a powerful five-sided symphony of political discord—this is the heart of the play. Asaf, Nakia, and Baron are joined by two students representing radical-left young American Jews (quirky Madeline Weinstein) and displaced, frustrated Palestinians (shattering Michael Khalid Karadsheh) as opinions, data, and passions fly.
It’s stimulating, exciting theater but not without flaws. One additional character speaks for the Israeli side (a searing Ben Rosenfield) and has an individual scene with Asaf. Though Ben Rosenfeld delivers a fine honest reading of the character, he feels inserted for balance since Asaf makes the same points later.
Lael Jellinek’s economic set, Reza Behjat’s subtle lighting, and Sarita Fellows’s understated costumes create a subdue environment for this fiery play. The time is described as September and early October of 2023, just before the vicious Hamas attacks and Israel’s response. The Ally would have been ever more incendiary if the setting were just a few weeks later. As it is, Moses’s work challenges and discomfits.
It so happens the author of the document, Nakia (a blazing Cherise Boothe) is Asaf’s former girlfriend, and his wife, the Korean-American Gwen (Joy Osmanski making the most of a relatively brief role), works for the university in pushing through a controversial housing project. In addition, Asaf is soon drawn into a hot-button campus conflict over freedom of speech.
