Raoul Bhaneja, Karen Glave and Michael Rubenfeld in Disgraced.Cylla von Tiedemann
Amir Kapoor, the central character in Ayad Akhtar's incendiary drama Disgraced, is a successful New York corporate lawyer who has done a vigorous job of repudiating his Pakistani Muslim heritage.
Amir is married to a WASP, drinks whisky, eats pork and criticizes the tenets of Islam with an unsparing vehemence worthy of Infidel author Ayaan Hirsi Ali. He's let the Jewish partners in his law firm believe his background is Indian and Hindu – hence that statue of Shiva gifted to him by his mentor.
But when Amir makes a reluctant nod to his real heritage – appearing in court at the behest of his wife and nephew to show support for a respected imam accused of terrorist ties – it lights a fuse that leads to a horrifying explosion and reduces his life to tatters.
Akhtar's play, a Broadway-London hit and winner of a 2013 Pulitzer Prize, arrives at Toronto's Panasonic Theatre plastered with critical blurbs such as "emotionally shattering" and "get ready to gasp." In fact, the play employs the kind of trusty shock tactics that ought to be familiar to anyone who has been going to the theatre in the last couple of decades – think God of Carnage, think Oleanna.
But look beyond Akhtar's deliberately gasp-inducing dialogue and you'll find a powerful attempt to articulate the experiences of Muslims in the West, post-9/11.
Amir (played here superbly by Raoul Bhaneja) is a self-professed apostate, but his rejection of Islam is also a survival tactic in a country where being Muslim is a huge liability. Rejecting your religion, however, is easier than rejecting a culture that's bred in your bones. This all becomes clear in the explosion at the heart of the play, during a dinner party hosted by Amir and his artist wife, Emily (Birgitte Solem).
The guests are Isaac (Michael Rubenfeld), a curator at the Whitney Museum, and his lawyer wife, Jory (Karen Glave), a colleague of Amir's at the firm. The party is meant to be celebratory, as Isaac plans to put Emily's work in his next show. Amir, however, has come under scrutiny at work for his publicized support of the imam and he's in a vicious mood, stoked by copious predinner drinks. When Emily – whose work is inspired by ancient Islamic art – and the Jewish Isaac begin extolling Muslim culture, Amir responds by excoriating the Koran.
Soon Isaac is rising to his bait and the veneer of liberal, secular civilization is stripped away to reveal deep-rooted racial and religious hatred. We may be in an Upper East Side apartment (sleekly designed by Sue LePage), but it begins to feel like we're watching an ugly confrontation in the West Bank. And Amir's appropriation of a certain vile "N" word only adds fuel to the fire, given that Jory is African-American. By the time the party ends, there have been further revelations and more disgraceful behaviour from Amir that sees his personal life collapse along with his professional hopes.
Akhtar, the Pakistani-American writer whose 2012 novel American Dervish also dealt eloquently with the issue of Muslim identity, seems to have written this play as a kind of purgative. By daring to bring up anti-Semitism, pride in 9/11 and other uncomfortable subjects, at the risk of confirming others' prejudices, he clears the way for a more honest discussion of what it means to be Muslim in America today.
The Toronto version of Disgraced is produced by Bhaneja's Hope and Hell Theatre Company as part of the Off-Mirvish season, and it proves an excellent vehicle for the actor. As Amir, he gives a fearless performance, at first hard-nosed and cynical, later belligerent and despicable. But in the end his character's agonizing pain seeps through. He's beautifully counterpointed by Rubenfeld's affable, bearish Isaac, who at one point references Woody Allen and in fact looks like a younger, beefier version of the comedian.
Solem is ideal as a gentle, Nordic-looking Emily, who is painting a picture of Amir in loving but misguided homage to Velázquez's portrait of the Moorish slave Juan de Pareja – proof that, no matter how sensitive a white person is, they can still be blind to what is racially offensive.
Glave bristles with righteous anger as Jory. Ali Momen is no less effective as Amir's nephew, Abe, whose mistreatment by the authorities causes him to trade assimilation for radicalization. Listening to him now, you can't help but think of those disaffected young people in the West drawn to Islamic State.
Director Robert Ross Parker's staging throbs with mounting tension en route to the climactic conflagration, but ultimately we're allowed to take a deep breath and think about what we've witnessed.
You may be wary about seeing Disgraced, given all the inflammatory, irresponsible rhetoric coming out of the current U.S. election, but the play seeks to expose underlying prejudices, not exploit them. Like Hirsi Ali, whose latest book, Heretic, steps back from anger to consider ways Islam might be reformed, Akhtar's aim is constructive. When we're done with our outraged gasps, he demands our deeper understanding.
Disgraced runs to April 24 at the Panasonic Theatre in Toronto (mirvish.com).