“The Who and The What”

Ayad Akhtar

Afzal has about all a man could want in life, save his precious wife whom he lost to cancer a few years ago.  As a Pakistani immigrant and now U.S. citizen, he owns a commanding thirty per cent of the Atlanta, taxi industry.  He has two beautiful, grown daughters who adore him:  Zarina, Harvard educated and now an aspiring novelist, and the younger Mahwish, a nurse-in-training engaged to a guy she has known since childhood.  As a devout Muslim, he is proud of the Mahwish’s intent in waiting to marry Haroon until the elder Zarina finds a husband; but since his elder daughter is slow in finding one, Afzal has decided to go on a online dating site as her and find a husband for her.  And he has hit the jackpot, finding a white-skinned, convert to Islam named Eli who is actually now an imam at the local mosque while also running a soup kitchen and providing plumbing for poor, Islamic immigrants.  The only thing Afzal has to do now is to convince the overly serious, somewhat sullen Zarina to meet Eli and to decide that he is the man for her!

With that set-up in his play The Who and The What, Ayad Akhtar appears to be veering far away from the suddenly spilled secrets, the intense anger, and the eventual violence that dominate his two, earlier plays, The Invisible Hand and Disgraced.  All three plays were written in an amazingly short eight-month period, and all respond in different ways to the successes and struggles of both living the American dream and of being a Muslim-American in 21^st Century America. 

Now in a superbly acted, astutely directed, and beautifully staged Bay Area premiere at Marin Theatre Company, Ayad Akhtar’s The Who and the What does in fact have many moments of wonderful comedy and of real heart that this family of three generates.  However, just when we have relaxed ourselves into believing the playwright this time is giving us a gentle, soothing look at a modern Muslim family, the TV sitcom atmosphere shifts into a family and societal drama full of big questions and challenges about a religion that many fear to raise aloud such questions and challenges.  The result in the end is a riveting evening where seemingly unresolvable differences in religious opinion and maybe in belief struggle to live along side the love and devotion of this seemingly close family.

As Afzal, Alfredo Huereca creates a persona in his kitchen and on the stage that is almost larger than life.  When his immense hands spread their digits and remain in constant motion as he speaks, one can almost feel and hear the air around him swish.  His voice is a full chorus of tones, ranges, clicks, and pops – all in an accent exotically foreign yet now wonderfully Americanized.  And his facial accompaniments include eyes that speak their own clear language of expressions and a mouth that grins, frowns, purses, and smirks in full sequences covering barely a few seconds.  For much of the play when he is on stage, his Afzal is the show to watch.

Afzal is exceptionally proud of himself for enticing through his own clever, online deception the skeptical, Caucasian-convert Eli (Patrick Alparone) to meet him on a park bench.  Eli thinks he is meeting a woman he had sat next to months earlier while listening to an Islamic woman advocating the beauty of Christianity.  Wanting no part of Afzal’s scheme, he almost leaves several times as Afzal quizzes whom he sees as his potential son-in-law, “How much do you make?” and “Are you a pervert?”  But Eli does stay and actually subsequently does get to meet later at a café an extremely uninterested Zarina, who has evidently come only to stop her father’s incessant prodding for her to do so. 

Zarina (a compelling, powerful Denmo Ibrahim) exudes frustration with her current life.  Whether talking to her sister, her father, or even her set-up meeting with Eli, she often avoids eye contact, plays nervously with her necklace, and clutches herself with one or both arms.  She also only vaguely answers questions directed at her — especially when asked about the novel she is writing.  Caught in a self-declared writer’s block, she has not written a word in six months, a novel that all she says is about “gender politics” and “women and Islam.” 

However, something unexpected happens during the awkward café meeting with Eli.  Between sips of sparkling water, Eli remains undeterred by Zarina’s disinterest and continues to ask her probing questions about her novel, one still in its nascent stage.  Zarina begins to express her exasperation of Eli’s waxing on about how Islam promotes equality, finally calling it “bullshit” and hissing, “You didn’t have to grow up as a woman in Islam.”  As the onion begins to peel, Zarina reveals ideas from her novel that she is exploring – ideas that maybe The Prophet Mohammed’s life and his relationship with his wives – and not Allah —  is what actually influenced his writing on the Qur’an.   As she has sudden new energy and spark, Zarina actually smiles at a perplexed but pleased Eli and rushes off now to write the novel now once again bubbling inside her.  Her questions begin to spill forth onto text on the page.  What if God was actually speaking through Mohammed’s wife to him?  What if God’s voice is female?  What if Allah is actually a … ?

With those questions and the resulting draft novel – one entitled The Who and The What, Ayad Akhtar’s play by the same name takes us and the family of four (Eli now being fully an accepted and welcomed member) on a rollercoaster ride of immense swings of emotions.  Full glimpses of the anger, feelings of betrayal, and questions of loyalties and love emerge that audiences have previously seen expressed in the other two of the playwright’s triad of plays about modern Muslim Americans.  Each of the four actors steps up her/his game to erupt in reactions that take them and the play places that earlier scenes of family comedy barely hinted.  Love of family is challenged by faith, by traditions and convictions, and in Ayad Akhtar style, by heretofore unspoken secrets now shared inadvertently and even purposefully.

Hana S. Sharif directs the one-hour, forty-minute (no intermission) play paying acute attention not only to the scripted scenes but especially adding nuances and special insights through the numerous scene changes.  As lights dim, the primary characters not only aid in needed property switches but also pause for an extra thoughtful look in space, glance with a telling expression eye-to-eye with another, or rush to catch unexpectedly the hand of another now exiting.  It is in these interim seconds between scenes that I found much of the play’s richness truly came to life.

Tim Mackabee’s scenic design is an immaculate, modern kitchen (one a fellow audience member remarked upon entering, “Will they be auctioning the kitchen off after the play closes?”).  The home setting smacks of the American Dream come true but in this case, one also surrounded by a beautifully sculptured backdrop wall of designs Middle Eastern in nature.  That backdrop as well as the scenes themselves is lit with hues and spots most striking by Wen-Ling Liao with a special effect right out of the Twilight Zone occurring when the volcano of family emotions erupts at its fullest.  Everett Elton Bradman never lets us forget this is a play about a Muslim family with the intriguing music chosen for scene changes – mystic music that reflects well the current mood of the story.  Jessica Berman as dialect coach deserves a special shout-out, especially for her evident work with Alfredo Huereca in creating his delightful array of Afzal’s accented expressions.

Marin Theatre Company’s production of Ayad Akhtar’s The Who and The What eases its audience into a story of people we can recognize as possible next-door neighbors and then shakes us up with the realization that the religious questions raised by one of them are ones that rip this family apart and to have life-affecting consequences for each of the members – even in modern America.  What we also have to contemplate, however, is that the resolution and acceptance this family in the end finds is one that in many other parts of the world could probably not occur.  What Ayah Akhtar seems to be telling us is that at even in today’s far-from-perfect America, Muslim Americans still have the chance to show courage of thought that Zarina shows and to publish writings that in other places of the world, would be death sentences.

Rating: 5 E

The Who and The What continues through March 24, 2019 at Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller Avenue, Mill Valley.  Tickets are available online at https://tickets.marintheatre.org/Online/ or by calling the box office at 415-388-5208, Tuesday – Sunday, noon – 5 p.m.