Theatre in Review: A Knock on the Roof (New York Theatre Workshop)

	Khawla Ibraheem. Photo: Joan Marcus

The title of Khawla Ibraheem's play refers to a specific tactic used by the Israeli Army in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. As Mariam, the protagonist, notes, "It's a small bomb they drop to alert us that we have five to fifteen minutes to evacuate before the actual rocket destroys the building." Much of A Knock on the Roof follows Mariam, a resident of Gaza, as she obsessively rehearses her escape plan in case of such an event. Such is daily life in a war without end.

A Knock on the Roof has an inherently dramatic structure, beginning with humorous sketches of daily life and dwindling by degrees into episodes of death and destruction. Mariam lives with her seven-year-old son Nour, who is addicted to sweets and beach trips, and her widowed (and opinionated) mother. Then war is declared; to be prepared, Mariam begins drilling -- seeing how far she can run in fifteen minutes; figuring in the weight of Nour, whom, she assumes, she will have to carry; and making provisions to include all-important records and identity papers. The endless, arguably obsessive, escape prep is Mariam's way of holding onto her sanity as bombs continue to fall, electrical power comes and goes, and the fear of annihilation grows.

Mariam, to be sure, is a coper through and through, and much of A Knock on the Roof is informed by wry humor. When her mother moves in, announcing it is safer for them to be together, Mariam muses, "As far as I know she is not the Iron Dome Defense System." Maybe not, but her mom is an ardent member of the religious police, warning, "How many times do I have to tell you, you can't shower naked during wartime? What if the house gets bombed while you are in the shower, and they need to dig us out from under the rubble? You must stay covered!" Thus, Mariam ends up in the shower dressed and soaking wet, looking and feeling foolish. She is also charming about Nour's strategies for getting around the demands of fasting during Ramadan, threatening to put him on a diet so he will be easier to carry.

But her mood turns bleak as reality becomes increasingly dire and everyone becomes inured to the violence around them: Mariam even spies a group of kids playing in the street acting out a funeral, their solemnities interrupted by giggles. The tiniest mistake can be fatal: An encounter with an armed man -- A policeman? A soldier? -- nearly ends in disaster when Mariam's phone alarm goes off and -- for a brief, but terrifying, instant -- she might be mistaken for a suicide bomber. At times Mariam can even feel the ground beneath her shaking from nearby explosions; it's as if the land is slipping away altogether. Written a decade ago, the script retains an awful immediacy given the leveling of Gaza in the Israeli war against Hamas.

The last ten minutes or so of A Knock on the Roof are frankly terrifying and heart-rending, for reasons you'll have to discover for yourself. Until then, however, Mariam's story isn't well-served for three principal reasons. First, Ibraheem's script has a way of dropping facts that often leave one distracted, confused, and wanting to know more. Mariam's husband is somewhere else - his location is never revealed -- getting an MBA; their situation is, to put it mildly, unclear and, when, later, Mariam says she is living a marital life she never wanted, you have to wonder about their backstory. Also, she appears to have been raised by a Christian father and a Muslim mother, her parents who exposed her to both religious traditions, often in one weekend. Living in a part of the world shaped by religious and ethnic conflict, how has that shaped her identity? The script never says.

Then again, one's comprehension is marred by the piece's borderline unintelligibility. Ibraheem has a natural stage presence but her heavily accented speaking voice and rushed delivery leaves one struggling to make out what she is saying. Her text is rich with imagery, blunt wisecracks, and wounding insights, but she delivers them in such willy-nilly fashion that nothing stands out in the sheer rush of words. She is particularly weak when transitioning between different passages, leaving one racing to catch up with the change of scene or passage of time. If the playwright spent a little more time giving the powerful script some much-needed grounding details and left the portrayal of Mariam to another actress, the result might have more impact.

Strangely, Ibraheem has worked for several years on this project with the director Oliver Butler yet he has seemingly done little or nothing to shape her performance. He has also signed off on Frank J. Oliva's set, which leaves the actress and her imprecise pronunciation at the mercy of New York Theatre Workshop's large volume. A production that sorely wants intimacy gets no support. The design has its moments, however: It's virtually impossible to tell where Oona Curley's lighting ends and Hana S. Kim's projections begin; theirs is a masterful collaboration. Also, Jeffrey Wallach has dressed Ibraheem appropriately. Rami Nakleh's sound design is often effective, but less movie-music underscoring would be welcome; the material is powerful enough that such gilding is unnecessary.

Overall, this is a frustrating experience: Mariam's story, conceived over a decade ago, continues to be horrifyingly relevant; it's a vital report from a war zone -- "a land that feeds on fire and blood" -- the existence of which should shame us all. "Do you think this is normal?" Mariam asks us as her plight continues to grow worse. The horror of A Knock on the Roof is that her nightmare is an everyday reality, and no end is in sight. --David Barbour