March 4, 2008
By Hedy Weiss
Theater Critic
Riddled with political and social ambivalence, ripe with sophistication and full of deliciously playable scenes and sharply etched characters (including one of the finest roles for a woman in recent memory), Yussef El Guindi's Our Enemies: Lively Scenes of Love and Combat, is smart, vivid theater that also should be the catalyst for a great deal of animated post-show conversation. What more can you ask of any play?
Now in its world premiere by the Silk Road Theatre Project, where director Patrizia Acerra has gathered a highly accomplished cast capable of balancing the play's mix of satire, humor, sex and incendiary politics, "Our Enemies" seduces with its cosmopolitan energy and canny twists on stereotypes. It also confidently engages in ambiguity -- posing edgy, not always easily answerable questions about what is authentic and what is opportunistic in a world awash in genuine terror, simplistic media messages, uneasily mixed-and-matched cultures and, most crucially of all, the ordinary matters of ego, lust and self-creation.
El Guindi, a Seattle-based Arab-American playwright, has a real gift for bringing mischief as well as gravitas to his work, and in this he resembles both Salman Rushdie and (surprise) the great Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, whose novel Enemies: A Love Story, is even echoed here. Not a bad mix.
"Our Enemies" is set in a major U.S. city where publishing (and a particular TV talk show) now champions writers with Arab-American roots, especially if they are willing to make the case against various aspects of Muslim extremism. Mohsen (a delightfully slick Andrew Navarro) is a former U.S. schoolteacher (with roots in a poor Iraqi family) who has made it big with his first book, arousing the enmity of some Muslims for his willingness to "air dirty laundry" in public. Next at the door of the publishing company run by Russel (Don Bender), a laughable Arabist, and his chief editor, Olivia (Susie Griffith), is Noor (Monica Lopez), the beautiful, headstrong young American-bred daughter of a wealthy Egyptian family. (Lopez's altogether sensational performance in this wonderfully imagined role marks her as an actress with genuine star quality.)
Both publisher and editor want Noor to become the representative of all young Muslim women opting for Western freedoms, but the writer wants no part of being a political symbol. And while her unreliable, wannabe writer boyfriend Gamal (Kareem Bandealy, an actor of beguiling gifts) is ablaze with rage at the media's depiction of Muslims (or maybe just his own floundering life) and engages in guerrilla tactics to undermine both Mohsen and Sheik Alfani (Vincent P. Mahler), a cleric who as a media voice for interfaith tolerance, Mohsen seduces Noor in a scene of blistering high comedy. As for the Sheik's all-American son Hani (James Elly), he heads to Egypt to visit relatives and undergoes a stunning awakening.
"Our Enemies" is a true multiring cultural identity circus to be sure, but one with a serious subtext. And El Guindi's belief that human nature trumps politics makes the play something special.