Theatre in Review: Sons of the Prophet (Roundabout Theatre Company/Laura Pels Theatre)

	Joanna Gleason. Photo: Joan Marcus.

It's always a treat when a playwright finds a new slant on familiar material, and, in Sons of the Prophet, Stephen Karam enlivens his dysfunctional family saga with any number of invigorating and amusing details. If the words "dysfunctional family saga" make your eyes glaze over with anticipatory boredom, I know what you're feeling, but wait a second. This isn't another clever take on wacky/sad people and their adorable neuroses. Sons of the Prophet has more than a few bumpy moments, but, for the most part, cuteness has been banished, and Karam has a knack for finding laughter in the midst of the most vexing existential dilemmas.

Much of what gives Sons of the Prophet its kick involves its characters' unusual milieu. Joseph Douaihy is a Lebanese-American man living in Eastern Pennsylvania, whose life is quietly unraveling. (The wittiest touch in Anna Louizos' set design is a show curtain depicting what appears to be a map of the Middle East, complete with Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt; only gradually do you realize that you're looking at towns in Pennsylvania.) The Douiahy family -- or what's left of it -- are Maronite Christians, a tribe that, as depicted here, tries to see every disaster as prima facie evidence of God's plan; as Joseph notes, he comes from the kind of family where a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis leads to the comment that at least you have a nervous system for your body to attack.

Joseph probably doesn't have MS, and several other diseases are also ruled out, as his doctors struggle to explain the fiery pain in his knees, accompanied by bouts of muscle weakness. This affliction is particularly troublesome since Joseph previously trained as an Olympic runner; also, he has to stay in a job he actively dislikes in order to hold on to his health insurance. But Joseph also has bigger troubles to contend with. His father has just died in a freak auto accident, trying to avoid hitting a decoy deer left on the road in a teenage prank. As his mother passed away a few years earlier, Joseph, who is 29, is left to raise his adolescent brother, Charles. Then their Uncle Bill shows up, claiming the patriarchal role. Only thing is, the elderly Bill is fading fast -- despite his caustic tongue, he is barely mobile -- and he becomes one more burden to Joseph. It's all par for the course in a family that, it is noted, "has a habit of dying tragically. We're like the Kennedys, without the sex appeal."

Further complicating their lives, both Joseph and Charles are gay, living in a part of the world where social opportunities are limited, to say the least. But Karam will have no hand-wringing of any kind; their relationship is that of humorously squabbling siblings -- even when Joseph is having a spinal tap, they can't stop themselves from indulging in mock fisticuffs. "Did you even have to come out?" asks Joseph, in exasperation, of the flamboyant Charles. Charles, irritated by his brother's low-key approach, comments witheringly that if anyone thinks Joseph is gay, it's because they think he's a lesbian.

Almost necessarily, the action meanders as Joseph becomes increasingly entangled in a series of tragedies, his attention ever more distracted by the absurd details. Uncle Bill quickly proves to be more of a burden than a boon, especially with his habit of mouthing off in various politically incorrect ways and his devotion to the blind Saint Rafka, whose eyeless portrait haunted Joseph's childhood. (An attempt at rigging a first-floor toilet for him in the hall closet is a notable disaster.) The brothers agree to meet with Vin, the young football hero (and foster child) who is responsible their father's death, even supporting him at a school board hearing about the future of his sports career. In another playwright's hands, this sequence might be an occasion for big scenes and tears; here, it devolves into a series of farcical mishaps. The indignities never end; when it looks as if Joseph is finally getting a boyfriend, their first sexual encounter is hampered as he wonders how to remove his clothes without showing the braces that shore up his legs.

At times, Sons of the Prophet threatens to stall altogether, especially in the scenes involving Gloria, Joseph's boss, a book packager who pushes him to write a memoir about the family's distant relation, Khalil Gibran. The wildest card in the playwright's deck, Gloria, who is still in shock from her husband's suicide, is given to talking jags that have everyone else looking for the exit. Boundaries mean nothing to her; she keeps Joseph on the payroll so she can bare her soul whenever she feels like it. In one of Karam's lesser inventions, each time Gloria puts her foot in it, she picks up her cell phone and pretends to take a call -- even when, as Joseph notes, the battery is dead. There are other weaknesses, too; the loss of Joseph and Charles' father doesn't carry much weight, because we never really get a sense of what he was like or the role he played in his sons' lives. As a result, Sons of the Prophet is more notable for its wisecracking ways than for any compelling emotional truths.

Still, in his exploration of life's randomness and the arbitrary nature of tragedy -- themes that have been explored by the likes of Beth Henley, Christopher Durang, and Craig Lucas, among others -- Karam holds our attention with his dry-eyed wit as he gently guides Joseph toward a moment of grace. (He uses the Khalil Gibran connection deftly, contrasting the best-selling mystic's life-is-beautiful bromides with Joseph's frequently mortifying circumstances; each scene begins with a projected heading derived from Gibran's magnum opus, The Prophet.) Providing no small assistance is the director, Peter DuBois, and a cast that is fully on the author's wavelength. The gifted Santino Fontana, in what may well be his breakthrough role, beautifully captures Joseph's seemingly cheerful, competent manner, and the way he keeps grief at bay with skeptical humor; he also turns a potentially clichéd routine involving one of those nightmarishly complicated phone answering systems into a sustained piece of hilarity. Yusef Bulos blusters effectively as Uncle Bill, who, poignantly, can't accept his failing powers. Chris Perfetti makes an appealing New York debut as Charles, even when cracking wise beyond his years. Charles Socarides is both appealing and a little bit shifty as the television reporter who would like to date Joseph and cover his story at the same time. Lizbeth Mackay has a touching bit as a former teacher of Joseph's, who meets him again in physical therapy. Joanna Gleason does her best with Gloria, but the character remains firmly on the fringe of the story, a bit of comedy relief where none is needed.

Louizos' scenic design, with its depiction of bus stations, doctors' offices, dumpy living rooms, and school auditoriums, is necessarily a bit drab,, but it moves with cinematic fluidity; each scene is lit with authority by Japhy Weidman. Bobby Frederick Tilley II's costumes are all spot-on, especially in contrasting Joseph and Charles' radically different sartorial styles. M. L. Dogg's sound design includes a harrowingly real car crash at the top of Act I.

As of now, Karam is more skilled at making laughter out of life's horrors than he is at probing the darker emotions underneath, and, based on the evidence here, he hasn't been able to assemble all of his plot elements in a fully coherent pattern. But Sons of the Prophet has a deadpan grasp of the absurdity of tragedy that isn't quite like the work of any other writer. The other skills can be picked up; what Karam has is the one thing you can't buy -- a voice of his own.--David Barbour