Disgraced

Amir, Emily,Isaac & Jory
making a toast

The Philadelphia Theatre Company, located in the Suzanne Roberts Theater, Broad and Lombard Streets, is presenting Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize winning Disgraced through November 8. This stimulating and provocative drama will have your head spinning for days. When an upper class Pakistani lawyer and his American wife invite a colleague and her husband to dinner, what begins with a cordial toast ends as an incendiary evening that leaves the audience gasping for breath. Amir (Pej Vahdat) is a self-proclaimed non-believer of Muslim descent, yet he is angered that his nephew Abe (Anthony Mustafa Adair) has Anglicized his name. .Friction ensues when his wife Emily (Monette Magrath), a white American girl, is making a name for herself in the art world by embracing the symbolism of Muslim art. .Emily has kept a secret from her husband Amir; Jory (Aimé Donna Kelly) has kept a secret from her colleague Amir; but it’s when Jory’s husband Isaac, the Jewish art critic (Ben Graney) gets into a discussion about Palestinians and Israelis, that sparks start to ignite. Suddenly the evening is no longer a polite social gathering as deeply ingrained feelings bubble to the surface. :”You don’t mean to say that you felt proud during 9/11?” Isaac asks in shock. “Maybe I did, just a little bit,” Amir responds. And the wreckage mounts from there .By the end of the evening, five lives are in ruins and the audience is in a state of shock. This show is not for the faint of heart but it is so captivating and thought provoking, such a magnificent study of human nature that you must make every effort to see it before it closes. Tickets are available at 215-985-0420 or by visiting online at PhiladelphiaTheatreCompany.org.