Disgraced *****

Bush Theatre, London
EXCERPT: "Ayad Akhtar’s play Disgraced won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize winner for drama and it really is his exceptional writing that leaps out at you. If ‘meaty’ ever warranted use in a review, it does so here: the religious, political and social issues grappled with in this superb play are timely, fascinating, and deeply provocative."

Ayad Akhtar’s play Disgraced won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize winner for drama and it really is his exceptional writing that leaps out at you. If ‘meaty’ ever warranted use in a review, it does so here: the religious, political and social issues grappled with in this superb play are timely, fascinating, and deeply provocative.

The play focuses in on Amir Kapoor (Hari Dhillon) and Emily (Kirsty Bushell), a happily married couple. Its climax is at the culmination of an intimate dinner party they hold for another couple, at which issues of identity are brought to the fore. Akhtar’s play explores how superficial the veneer of uniformity is, and exposes the deep roots and imprints of your cultural birthright. It simultaneously proposes that self-consciously rational decisions can still be usurped by instinct, whilst also suggesting that these cultural platforms are just used to excuse behaviour by labelling it as instinctive. The question remains: which came first and is accountable: the person or their belief system?

Akhtar’s script is so clever, and Dhillon’s performance as the self-asserting liberal is so good, because - whilst despising Amir's hypocritical and alarming instincts - he is a likeable and understandable enough figure to prompt deep reflection on the damaging effects of always being in a minority. It is quite simply astonishingly powerful stuff, to make you weep and gasp and laugh and shiver all over.

Dhillon, Bushell, Sara Powell, Nigel Whitmey and Danny Ashok give near flawless performances, building wholly convincing characters, relationships and situations, and giving this five star new play the debut UK performance it deserves. Nadia Fall directs them so cleverly in Jaimie Todd’s distinguished set that I never felt frustrated by the traverse stage set up. The actors on stage are so mesmerising that I never even noticed the audience sitting directly opposite me: this in itself is quite the commendation.