"Disgraced" is not quite ripped from the headlines, a la "Law and Order". But it surely is timely piece of work, given this political year. And unlike "All the Way", which opened the Rep season and which looked at the past and how it influences the present, "Disgraced" is about the present and how it influences the future. It deals with religion, ethnicity, fundamentalism and economics and just how relevant they are today. And it is, at times, breath-taking.
A successful mergers-and-acquisitions attorney is living the good life in New York City. The Fifth Avenue apartment is lovely, an enviable creation from Kevin Depinet, the scenic designer. (We can tell it's Fifth Avenue – there's the park and in the distance, the San Remo Apartments.) His wife is an artist who's on her way up. He has minions to scream at and hang up on, and is on his way to make partner in the law firm.
Husband and wife chat about an incident in which a waiter was unpleasant the previous night. It was a racist incident. This is a little difficult to understand, as the wife is WASP-y and the husband is just sort of Semitic-looking. Perhaps they looked at the name on the credit card. The attorney's name is Amir Kapoor. Kapoor is an American, born in the United States to Pakistani parents who are Muslim. He is not at all actively religious and, indeed, disdains it.
But life sneaks up on him, his ethnicity begins to define him to others and the beliefs he was raised with and presumably has rebuffed are more ingrained than he realizes. His personal life becomes enmeshed with his professional life, and the same happens to his wife, whose work has become influenced by the Islamic art she's seen. The vortex is reached at a dinner (pork tenderloin!) with another couple – she's another attorney at the firm and he's a gallery owner where the artist wife is hoping to show her work.
The dinner party scene is amazing. Its dialogue is, by turns, clever and hair-raising. The choreographed moves at the table are a small masterpiece themselves. And the acting, which is always good, rises to exquisite levels here. John Pasha, as Amir, is a fine master of the universe, from bluster to begging to disbelieving. His wife is played by Leigh Williams, more optimistic, a lighter spirit in contrast to him. Isaac, the gallery owner, Jonathan C. Kaplan, holds his own with the much larger Amir in a verbal battle, raging back at him with fervor. Rachele Christopher is Jory, the other attorney, crisply delivering line after line that make us pay close attention. The fifth member of the cast is Fahim Hamid, playing Amir's deeply Americanized nephew Abe, who's changed his first name from Hussein, who learns a great deal during the year or so over which the play takes place.
Seth Gordon directs the play by Ayad Akhtar. Akhtar will be in town to participate in a panel discussion on the subject of public perceptions of Islam in post-9/11 America. It's Monday night, February 15, at 7.30 in the Mainstage Theatre, and Gordon will moderate the panel.
This is a play to shake up an audience, and it does that very well – just what art is intended to do.
Disgraced
through March 6
Repertory Theatre of St. Louis
314-968-4925