DISGRACED is the story of a successful Muslim-American attorney who has renounced his religion and secured a coveted piece of the American Dream. Living high above Manhattan's Upper East Side, he and his artist wife host an intimate dinner party that is about to explode. Witty banter turns to vicious debate, and with each cocktail comes a startling new confession, painting an unforgettable portrait of our perception of race and religion.
Reviewing DISGRACED at LCT3 for The New York Times, Charles Isherwood wrote:
"This rollicking new play by Ayad Akhtar is a continuously engaging, vitally engaged play about thorny questions of identity and religion in the contemporary world. The dialogue bristles with wit and intelligence. Mr. Akhtar puts contemporary attitudes toward religion under a microscope, revealing how tenuous self-image can be for people born into one way of being who have embraced another."
'Disgraced,' which races by in less than 90 minutes, is not a comforting play. It forces us to reflect on who we are, and what we really think about the guy with the different race, religion or ethnicity who lives next door.
'Disgraced' was far from perfect when it opened off-Broadway two years ago, but it worked up to a point...Now 'Disgraced' is back, with a new cast, on Broadway at that. But the bigger stage hasn't been kind to the show. Because the play seems like a PowerPoint lecture about current hot topics -- terrorism, Islam, Jews, religion, art -- it requires excellent acting. Pity the performances here are wildly uneven, and a couple of them are downright bad. Purists may look suspiciously at Josh Radnor...But Radnor's actually quite good as Isaac, a smarmy, smug Whitney Museum curator -- and Karen Pittman, the original cast's lone survivor, is even better as Isaac's no-nonsense wife, Jory. No, the problems are Hari Dhillon and Gretchen Mol. Inconveniently they play the leads, attorney Amir Kapoor and his wife, the WASP-y painter Emily. And they're never believable -- either as a couple or as, you know, people.
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