Through April 12, 2009
Reviewed by Andrea Braun
Back of the Throat opens in a typical young guy's apartment; it's messy with an unmade bed, books and junk strewn around, wadded up pieces of paper all over the floor, and its inhabitant is equally disheveled. He wears oversized sweat pants, a tee shirt and clogs. Pretty normal overall, except for the presence of two burly Homeland Security agents who have invaded the man's private space. It's clear that if his name were Ken and he had blue eyes, he'd be alone. But he is called Khaled, his ethnic background is not Caucasian, and it is shortly after 9/11. Khaled is about to have a very bad day.
Khaled (Alan David) has allowed his home to be searched because he believes he has nothing to hide. Bartlett (Kevin Beyer) and Carl (John Pierson) don't necessarily see it that way. They find copies of Penthouse and accuse him to bestiality. (You have to see it to believe it.) They grill him about every aspect of his life from his unfinished short stories to his breakup with his girlfriend to his visits to the library and (allegedly) a strip club. They start out friendly, then alternate the "good cop/bad cop" roles until their visit becomes a torture session. Most horrifying of all to me is that they are funny. We do laugh. Khaled, however, does not.
Julie Layton plays three roles: a librarian whom the agents question about Khaled's reading habits and his association with Asfoor (Joseph Garner) a recent immigrant who wants to learn English; Khaled's disaffected girlfriend who leads the agents to believe there might be something suspicious going on; and a pole dancer who identifies Khaled as one of her customers based on a camouflage jacket and a baseball cap. ("They" all look alike, of course.)
David Wassilik has a lot to work with here, both in the quality of the play by Yussef El Guindi, and this cast of heavy hitters. They are all top tier local actors and they give us an experience that is real, not one that is just a polemic on the unfair treatment of the many because of the actions of a few. David's work is particularly impressive. His eyes are his greatest tool-they can sparkle with intelligence and engagement, become clouded with wariness or fear, and go dead with resignation and removal. At one point in the play, it really is like Khaled has left his body and it all comes from the eyes.
Beyer and Pierson are an effective stage team, as they showed recently in Sabina at the NJT, but here they aren't the intellectual peers Freud and Jung, but a rather dim pair whose flag pins demonstrate their outer patriotism while their behavior points to their inner sadism. What they say and what they clearly feel are at odds throughout the play. As Khaled says, "Context is everything."
There is a double closet in the apartment which is one of the more clever uses of set I've seen in a while: It opens to the outside world. It even becomes a strip club complete with pole and disco ball. The stripper is dressed (well, insofar as she is dressed at all) in red, white and blue. Her father was a Marine, and her outfit "honors" him, she says.
All Americans, we are taught, are endowed with certain inalienable rights, among those, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. All Americans. Well, maybe not quite all. Maybe not those who aren't ethnic Europeans. Maybe not those from African roots. Maybe not those with red skin who still live on reservations. Maybe not those with dark skin and eyes whose names have to be pronounced "in the back of the throat." Did 9/11 mobilize the U.S. or just give it an excuse for its intractable fear of the Other? Which came first, the prejudice or the planes?
Back of the Throat makes a significant statement as a part of the Actors' Studio season on power and politics. I didn't feel that I was watching so much as bearing witness to the Arab-American experience post 9/11. It is an intense evening of theatre, well worth attending.
Back of the Throat runs through April 12, 2009 at the Actor's Studio at the Gaslight Theatre. Call 314-458-2978 or visit http://www.stlas.org/.
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