Theatre in Review: The Ally (Public Theater)

	Cherise Boothe. Photo: Joan Marcus

The unthinkable has happened: We have a playwright who can out-argue Joshua Harmon. The latter, the indefatigable author of Bad Jews, Admissions, and the currently running Prayer for the French Republic, is a master at creating disputatious characters, each of them willing to out-talk everyone else onstage. Frankly, however, they look like pikers compared to the crowd in The Ally. Devising a plot that couldn't be more current, playwright Itamar Moses has lined up a murderer's row of verbal brawlers, none of them willing to give an inch on the issues that matter to them most. Character after character expresses his or her point of view in no uncertain terms, using passion combined with steel-trap logic, only to be worked over and knocked out by whoever comes next. It is the most vigorously and closely argued drama to come our way in a long, long time. It is also frequently hilarious.

And, as is often true in contemporary America, only a simple gesture is needed to set off tidal waves of contention. Asaf, a middle-aged playwright and a part-time college writing teacher, is approached by Baron, his most gifted student, for a favor: Baron's cousin was killed in a George Floyd-style incident. (It was an egregious case of walking while Black; the young man, passing by a parking lot, was tagged as suspicious; the police intervened, the situation escalated, and now he is dead.) The official investigation into the incident is proceeding at a glacial pace and fear is spreading that a whitewash is in the works. Would Asaf sign a petition demanding justice be delivered?

The petition is actually a twenty-page manifesto touching on any number of issues, including a passage calling for an end to US aid for Israel, which it terms an apartheid state. Asaf, the son of Israeli émigrés and no friend of Benjamin Netanyahu's policies, nevertheless feels discomfited. Then again, it's a minor passage, the overall cause is sound, and he is touched that Baron has turned to him for help. Also, the gesture has the full approval of Asaf's wife, Gwen, an employee at the local university in charge of outreach to the surrounding Black community (where Baron and his cousin grew up) regarding a campus expansion project. It's a win/win situation, no? And, really, who will notice his name among so many others?

In rapid succession, Asaf, meeting with students Rachel and Farid, agrees to sponsor a Jewish group working with its Palestinian counterparts to host a Jewish historian whose writings detect colonial impulses in all of Israel's wars going back to 1948. ("I'm just trying to figure out how you ended up running an organization dedicated to the opposite point of view of the one you used to have," says a baffled Gwen.) This triggers Reuven, a member of the Jewish Student Union (the "official" group on campus), who lays out a counterargument, accusing Asaf of fatal naivete and probable self-loathing. When Rachel and Farid form an alliance with Baron's group that brooks no dissent, the outmaneuvered Asaf raises concerns about that anti-Israel passage, unleashing a blistering debate, with all sides agreeing on a single point: Asaf, having done everything they've asked, is weak-willed, out of touch, and a traitor to the truth. Not helping matters, the document in question was written by Nakia, a political organizer and Asaf's college-era girlfriend; as it happens, she didn't think much of his political ideas then and her opinion isn't improving.

The nagging question at the heart of The Ally is whether the concept of intersectionality, a holy grail among today's activists, can be made to work when the members of the left are so willing to tear each other apart. Asaf, a classic well-meaning leftist -- raised in Berkeley and the product of "the acoustic-guitar-based variety of Judaism, where you go into the woods and sing egalitarian versions of the prayers and try to hook up with girls from the central valley named, like, Serena," is the kind of squishy, even-handed sort whom the others deplore. To the Black characters, he is hopelessly cocooned in white male privilege; to Farid, Rachel, and Reuven, he is either a bleeding heart or complicit in genocide. Each of these arguments contains a grain of truth, and, in a stunning series of arias, each character lays solid groundwork for his or her outrage. But don't Asaf's caveats matter at all? If every political discussion is a zero-sum game, how can anyone move forward? What's to stop every discussion from descending into a morass of recriminations?

To Moses' credit, nobody gets off the hook. Rachel sells Asaf on his sponsorship, saying that she is "trying to preserve Judaism's grand intellectual tradition of not knowing anything for sure." Reuven counters that such an attitude is hardly appropriate in an environment where students are facing "graffiti reading 'Zionists should be sent to the gas chamber'." He also persuasively argues that Rachel's we're-just-asking questions stance reaches a logical ending in Israel, surrounded by enemies on three sides, ceasing to exist. When Asaf protests that the situation is complicated, an infuriated Rachel replies, "Yeah, that's another tactic. Painting the situation as so complicated no one can possibly understand it." Delivering the knockout punch is Farid, who, born in Gaza, witnessed firsthand the destructive effects of Israeli policy. Scornfully echoing those who would call for "the Palestinian Ghandi," he details the peaceful activists who are "routinely beaten, arrested, detained for protesting the theft or bulldozing of their own homes or for no cause at all."

Asaf is horrified by the framework that sees Baron's case against the local cops as equivalent to the Palestinian dilemma, casting both as struggles by people of color against oppressive colonizers. To which, Nakia replies, Asaf "grew up hearing stories from old hippies about the early Civil Rights movement, in which Jews did play a role, and so what is at least partly bothering him is our failure to, as a result, forever prostrate ourselves and remain grateful." "Two-thirds of Freedom Riders were Jewish," roars Asaf. "The lawyers in Loving, Scottsboro. Should I go on?" "You're leaving out the Freedom Riders who were Black.," she snaps back. From there, it's one small step to citing Black antisemitism (Louis Farrakhan, for example), and counteraccusations of Jewish slumlords. Of course, Kanye is brought up. But what about Asaf's passive-aggressive failure to look at the video of Baron's cousin's murder? He has no answer for that.

As tempers rise and any possible resolution recedes into the distance, Lila Neugebauer's production maintains a constantly ascending line of dramatic tension, thanks to a cast more than capable of parsing Moses' fiercely detailed, often merciless, arguments. As Asaf, the eye of the storm, Josh Radnor maintains his character's self-deprecating sense of humor even as he grows red-faced with fury and, later, fear -- feeling unsafe as a Jew for perhaps the first time. Even as his assertion that two opposing ideas can often be true is dismissed by the others as mere moral acrobatics, he insists forcefully on the "need a left with moral credibility." Cherise Boothe, possessor of a look that slays, her lips twitching ever so slightly to suppress what she thinks, is a superb opponent as Nakia, who is also fighting to save a neighborhood already gutted and ghettoized by campus expansion. (She suspects that part of Asaf's anger goes back to an insult she handed him two decades earlier and she's not entirely wrong about that.)

Equally fine are Elijah Jones as Baron, devastated by family tragedy and getting a real-time lesson in Middle East politics; Michael Khalid Karadsheh as Farid, bursting with indignation that his people's suffering goes unrecognized; Ben Rosenfield as Reuven, informing Asaf that his seemingly hostile demeanor is standard practice for disputative Israelis; and Madeline Weinstein as Rachel, who tells Asaf, "I lost family in the Shoah, too, Professor, which is why my mother told me I'm breaking her heart," neither fact allowing her to abandon her search for justice. Observing cannily from the sidelines is Joy Osmanski as Gwen, who provides a perspective on racism that only a Chinese-American could contribute.

Staged in the Public's Anspacher Theater, Neugebauer has opted for a simple design that provides plenty of room for her debaters to move around. Lael Jellinek's set is a nearly empty space framed in light-colored wood panels. Reza Behjat's lighting blends warm and cool white tones to create various looks. Sarita Fellows' costume designs provide clues to each character's social position and background. Bray Poor's sound design is most noticeable when evoking the rumble of a crowd at a demonstration that, as the lights go down, Asaf has yet to decide whether to attend.

One charge leveled at Asaf, one that largely sticks, is, never having been on the receiving end of prejudice or oppression, he can't understand them. It's easy to raise objections, goes the argument, when your life isn't on the line. A possible solution comes from a Black female rabbi (also played by Boothe), who notes, "Ideas don't feel. That's why they're appealing. We can stay in our heads forever, turning them, following them to infinity, and be safe because, in your head, you can't be hurt." The Ally turns over plenty of ideas, but a safe space it is not; it's a stimulating, dismaying lesson in what it's like to be caught in the vice of history, one that challenges us to make choices, no matter how painful they might be. --David Barbour