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“Language Rooms” is not for the faint of heart.
The new play by Yusef El-Guindi playing at the Wilma Theater through April 4 is a blustery play with dialogue that can elicit both cackling laughs as well as gasps of genuine shock, but the fine line of satire it walks recreates a circumspect and conspiratorial loyalty we have to the stage and our country.
The play centers around Ahmed (Sevan Greene), a Arab American who has submitted himself to the American dream by becoming a translator at an Abu-Ghraib-like American interrogation facility. Through inter-office paranoia and bizarre team-building exercises, Ahmed’s struggle to become a part of this professional family comes to represent a key struggle in immigrants’ assimilation into the American culture.
All four characters in the play are — to a certain degree — American immigrants who have learned to overcompensate for their cultural differences through willful assimilation into what is often hypocritical practices of the American way. Nasser (J. Paul Nicholas), the only other fellow employee at the institution who is of Muslim heritage, is both amicably helpful and self-serving while Esther (Julienne Hanzelka Kim), a masseuse whose parlor is frequented by the employees of the facility, dreams of moving to America (perhaps through a shotgun wedding with Ahmed). Finally there is Kevin (Peter Jay Fernandez), a candid yet conniving boss, attempts to establish himself as Ahmed’s surrogate American father.
What follows is a sometimes comedic, sometimes heartbreaking look at the occasional paradoxical notions of loyalty perpetuated by the experiences of first- and second-generation immigrants in the United States.
Though the script struggles to tie loose ends together and contains a twist in the second act that may seems implausible, the dialogue and characterizations place us in a world of fiction. We are forced to not only accept this vision, but to mold ourselves around it. The tension of political kowtowing and the tragedy of familial obligations gone awry pepper the story with genuine emotion, but traditional emotional arcs are forewent in large part to produce a surreal sweeping effect.
The play itself becomes an experiment in juxtaposed tones for which to assume the perspective of Ahmed, the first generation immigrant who is torn between obligations to his family and those to the country that has predominantly overshadowed his blood relations. Kevin attempts to rank Ahmed’s loyalty to the office staff by analyzing his loyalty to his own family, and the result makes Ahmed a victim of his own need for attaining upward mobility in the United States. The play goes to great lengths to make the feeling of permanent exile relatable to even the most comfortable of citizens.
Several of the devices used to keep the audience at arms length are simply off-putting though. The minimalist set is one element I found to be more distracting than deepening. The stage was divided into several rooms delineated by broad white lines across the floor. While it is interesting, I kept looking at a backdrop of silhouetted figures playing basketball and waiting for some sort of explanation, which never did occur.
The play is masterfully directed, acted and written, but a strict inadherence to a traditional narrative structure may frustrate some. Either way, the play is meant to pick at the scabs of America that will never heal and for that reason, the central ideas in this play are necessary steps in the healing process.
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