Is everyone required to have an agenda? You may think you don't have one, but that can end up looking a lot like its own agenda to those who wave theirs around. That's what happens to the central character in Our Enemies: Lively Scenes of Love and Combat, who is pulled and tugged when she just wants to stand in her own space. And so the character without the agenda becomes the most faceted role in Yussef El Guindi's play, in which the other characters may at first be louder but actually exist within thinner forms.
Our Enemies is both specific to and understandable beyond the world in which it is set, and far more entertaining than a dry synopsis would suggest. It's providing Golden Thread Productions with a forceful start to its 20th season of theater dedicated to the Middle Eastern American experience. El Guindi is writing about contemporary affairs, and his play's relevance hasn't waned since it was first staged in Chicago in 2008.
Noor, the central character, is an Egyptian American who envisions a writing career along the lines of Danielle Steel or Barbara Cartland. But because of her background, no one else can quite get their heads around her disinterest in cultural specificity. She's a good writer, says a book editor, but it would be a better sell if she played to Western expectations of the plight of women in Arab culture. All Noor wants to do is write a steamy bodice-ripper, and we soon see she is just about the opposite of a woman in plight.
This particular literary clash of Eastern-Western cultures is hardly a clash at all, at least compared to the intra-Arab conflicts that spin around Noor as she makes her way through contemporary New York. As the subtitle promises, the play is divided into short scenes featuring a variety of characters that don't at first seem connected. In addition to the pointed eloquence El Guindi provides his characters, another of the play's pleasures is the gradual reveal of how these characters are connected.
At Thick House, Mikiko Uesugi has created a simple, stylish set that easily adapts for the rapid series of the scenes. Director Torange Yeghiazarian nicely shapes those scenes, adjusting tones as they swerve from comic to satiric to disturbing. The performances are also smartly rendered, with Denmo Ibrahim capturing the veritable force of nature that El Guindi has created in Noor. This is a sensual woman who doesn't take guff from anyone, certainly not from Gamal, her sometimes boyfriend whose scattershot anger is provocatively captured in James Asher's performance.
Gamal is a terrorist to the extent that he pushes a cake into the face of an outspokenly homophobic Muslim clergyman (Munaf Alsafi) or when he poses as a TV makeup man to write "whore" on the forehead of an unwitting author (Kunal Prasad) whom he considers an Arab Uncle Tom. Also ably playing parts in the puzzle of relationships are Annemaria Rajala as the sleek book editor, Salim Razawi as the clergyman's seemingly meek son, and Dale Albright in a series of roles that includes a hyper-queen publisher.
The enemies of the play's title don't so much refer to hostile forces outside the Arab-American community as the forces within it. The characters may now be in America, but roots are too deep not to become entangled. As one character says, "I just can't stand this never-ending history of us."
Our Enemies: Lively Scenes of Love and Combat will run through Nov. 20 at Thick House. Tickets are $15-$34. Go to goldenthread.org.