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Next Act Theatre opens its season with Yussef El Guindi’s Back of the Throat. Set in New York in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the play centers on a young Arab American writer being questioned in his home by two government officials. The protagonist, Khaled, has been flagged as potentially connected to a deceased suspect in the 9/11 attacks by circumstantial evidence and the incomplete accounts of a librarian, an ex girlfriend and a stripper.
The power of El Guindi’s script lies in its thriller structure—as if watching an episode of “24,” I was on the edge of my seat waiting to find out Khaled’s innocence or guilt—paired with a very different objective. The story invites us to consider how we would feel and behave if subjected to intense scrutiny colored by racism, foregone conclusions and a pervasive desire for a bloody justice. As Director Edward Morgan notes, “the play is cleverly murky,” denying us a clear-cut answer and instead pressing us to question the way we form judgments and the ruthlessness that can be born from profound fear and loss. Characters from Khaled’s past pop into the interrogation scene and have conversations with him, the dialogue seeming mainly to reflect conjectures the agents have already formed. All Khaled can do is argue with the accusing specters and the ambiguity of the device well suits the factual murkiness Morgan extols.
As Khaled, Christopher Tramantana offers a realistic response to the invasion of his character’s privacy and gradual stripping of dignity. He opens the show with a plausibly high degree of discomfort and gradually descends into utter humiliation and horror. Mohammad N. ElBsat is measured and enigmatic as Asfoor, the man Khaled has been linked to. His speech about the imperialist power of English, “the language that has fallen on us and made us all like children again,” is particularly hard hitting. As the primary interrogator, Carl, Jonathan Wainwright depicts America’s puritanical roots; his casual xenophobia and possessive interpretation of the American Dream are jarringly familiar. As his partner, Bartlett, Andrew Voss skillfully embodies a smarmy, virulent strain of American “patriotism.” He almost gleefully cites the rulebook about how many seconds a subject’s scream can last without legally reflecting “torture.” Finally, Alexandra Bonesho puts in a diverse performance as the play’s three female characters. Particularly memorable is her Texan stripper, a vivacious narcissist who encapsulates the aggressive homogenization of sexual expression in mainstream American culture; she readily admits to forcibly “finishing Khaled off” when he didn’t pay a satisfactory level of attention to her act. She and Bartlett are a match made in hell.
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All in all, Back of the Throat is a piece of cultural self-reflection well worth undertaking. It runs through Oct. 25 at Next Act Theatre, 255 S. Water St. For tickets, call 414-278-0765 or visit nextact.org.
