Review - Disgraced

I was at a committee meeting yesterday afternoon, minding my own business, when a Tony voter friend contacted me to see if I would like to attend Disgraced with him that very night.  Sure, I said!  I had been offered tickets to the opening night a couple of weeks ago, but had to turn them down in the wake of my sister's medical adventures.  I missed the show when it played Off-Broadway and before it won the Pulitzer, so I was glad to finally see its Broadway incarnation.  Especially from Tony voter seats.  :)

I'm now having a problem constructing this review because I made the mistake of discussing the play with my Tony voter friend (TVF) this morning.  I'm not absolutely certain, but I'm pretty sure he called me 'morally reprehensible' for not coming to the same conclusion he did about the play (he found it repugnant.  Well done, but repugnant.)  So...wow.  How can you even respond to something like that?!  I always have a hard time discussing plays with people who only deal in absolutes, such as, my opinion is the only opinion.  Well, no, actually, it's not.  A play is not a math problem.  There's no one answer.  Your being 'right' does not preclude my being 'right.'  But I guess this play does dig in and ask some really ugly questions, so now I'm wondering about myself and my reaction to it.  Actually, though, I guess that does fit right in with this play...

photo credit: Sara Krulwich

Disgraced is about Amir, a young, successful Pakistani-American lawyer who has spent his life rejecting his past and his Muslim roots.  He's changed his name to one that sounds more Indian, he's married a beautiful blond WASPy woman.  He is seemingly living the American Dream, wearing $600 shirts and living in a posh apartment.  He's constructed a life for himself that slowly becomes unraveled when he allows his nephew and his wife to convince him to visit a Muslim imam who has been jailed on, possibly, trumped up charges of terrorism.  The way his life systematically crumbles is both compelling and horrifying to watch.  He's a part of his own downfall, and yet he's also helpless as forces outside his control whirl around him.  Two other characters, an art curator and his wife (who just happens to work at Amir's law firm), come to a dinner party and that's where everything comes to a head.

There are a lot of coincidences in the play, and maybe situations line up a little too neatly, and maybe one of the characters is more of a mouthpiece than an actual character. BUT.  This is a powerfully smart, provocative play that dares to discuss topics that are generally not heard about onstage.  Especially on a Broadway stage.  Race, religion, terrorism, self-identification, tribalism - they're all tossed out in bald, ugly, completely realistic language that gets balder and uglier the more the characters drink during the dinner party.  The play is extremely well-crafted, well-directed and well-acted - even with all the clues written into the script, I was still completely shocked and appalled by some of the things that happened.  It's stuff that makes you cover your eyes and wish you had covered your ears, all told in a fantastically dramatic way.  I enjoyed the experience of seeing Disgraced very much, ugliness and all.

So...what does it say about me that I completely did not get out of the play what my TVF got out of it?  It makes me confused.  I'm pretty savvy.  He's pretty savvy (though way more cynical than me, if we're speaking truth here).  I saw the hope and self-awareness coming out of the ashes of Amir's destruction.  Yes, horrible things were said and these people have horrible qualities, but don't you find that anywhere?  My TVF seriously thought the playwright was advocating Islamic extremism and that it's my (and every other person/critic who has enjoyed the play) liberal guilt that makes me feel as if I have to say I liked it, but how could I like it when it says something so reprehensible?  I did not get that AT ALL.  At the top of the play, the wife is drawing her husband, Amir, and she talks about why she wants to draw him after an altercation they had the night before with a stupid waiter (and I'm paraphrasing here):  she was interested in 'exploring the gap between what he [the waiter] assumed about you and what you really are.'  I think the play is delving into many explorations of that.  This is a group of smart people who think they know themselves and what they believe, and slowly, over the course of an evening, they realize they don't know anything at all about themselves.  And maybe what they believed before isn't what they should be believing.  At the end of the play, I saw that Amir was ready to move beyond the life he's constructed for himself and could learn how to really exist in the world where he wouldn't have to loathe himself.  Yes, he had to lose everything first.  But it takes bravery to start over.  So I saw hope.  My TVF saw destruction.  He and I did agree that it's rather a miracle that a play on Broadway right now could inspire such impassioned conversation, so at least there's that.  But I'm glad I don't have such a nihilistic view of the world - perhaps I'm just too naive, like the characters at the start of Disgraced.  I just hope I'm never at a dinner party that ends like the one in the play!  Morally reprehensible or not, I can't wait to see another play by this author; we'll see what kinds of opinions it brings up in my world...