“Yohen” is the exotic-sounding title of playwright Philip Kan Gotanda’s disappointingly banal new relationship drama at Silk Road Theatre Project. The word itself describes a rare occurrence in Japanese pottery-making whereby the finished product—depending on which way you look at it—is either flawed and irreparably damaged, or beautiful and worth saving. It’s a metaphor, of course, for how Japanese Sumi (Cheryl Hamada) and African-American James (Ernest Perry, Jr.) have come to view the state of their marriage after thirty-seven years. A couple who first met and fell in love in post-World War II Japan, Sumi and James, an ex-GI, now find themselves retired and living comfortably in a suburb of Los Angeles circa 1986. Working against stereotype, the character of Sumi, we soon learn, is anything but the obsequious Asian wife. In fact, Gotanda sprinkles details such as the fact that she was already married once, was anything but domestic (wouldn’t clean, couldn’t cook) and was unable to have children. When a mid-life crisis sparks a spiritual reawakening inside Sumi, it sends her back to school (to obtain a fine-arts degree in Japanese ceramics) and the unambitious, couch potato and beer-guzzling James packing. Now as the late film critic Pauline Kael once astutely observed, there’s something annoying about the disgruntled wife who decides to “take classes,” maybe because it infers that the husband is “in no need for reeducation.” But even this personal cavil aside, Sumi’s character loses all credibility by the end, when she ends up a weepy mess begging her husband to return. And it’s difficult to believe that it would take thirty-seven years of marriage and a temporary separation to spark the tough conversations surrounding mixed-race marriage and sterility that Sumi and James seem to be having here for the first time. There are a few moments in the drama, and actors Hamada and Perry are far too good and likable not to make some of their lackluster lines work, but the playwright’s penchant for spoken lyricism, displayed in his far superior “Ballad of Yachiyo,” is missing here, as is an insightful and thought-provoking examination of assimilation, race and feminism, as in “The Wind Cries Mary,” Gotanda’s loose take on Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler.” Steve Scott directs with his customary attention to character nuance and detail, but hasn’t nailed the rhythm of the play’s laborious first half. Ultimately, there’s nothing bad about “Yohen,” there’s just nothing special about it. Or nothing that Strindberg, or for that matter Bergman, didn’t already do. Indeed, “Yohen” here might as well be Japanese for “Scenes from an Asian-African-American Marriage.” (Fabrizio O. Almeida)

At Chicago Temple, 77 West Washington, (866)811-4111. Thu 7:30pm/Fri 8pm/Sat 4pm & 8pm/Sun 4pm. $30-$34. Through November 2.

RECOMMENDED

A formulaic but moving story about a demanding Korean immigrant father and the ways his two almost-grown sons cope with and rebel against him while coming to terms with their own identity. While on a road trip from Arizona to Durango, Colorado revelations about each character are surfaced somewhat predictably in the highly tense atmosphere of the family car. The writing sometimes feels realistic, especially during all-too-recognizable tropes of family conflicts, but all-too-often falls into cliché about overachieving first-generation kids and the parents who push them too hard. What the show lacks in originality, however, it makes up for in moments of humor and real pathos when the dialogue does connect, with a few truly powerful interactions that make up for the rest. Great acting all around, with a particularly convincing Dawn Wang as the rebellious, slacker son. One only wishes the actors had a little more material to work with. The technical aspect of the show deserves special mention, with truly inspired artistic direction and engaging use of the set. (Monica Westin) 

At the Chicago Temple Building, 77 W. Washington, (888)745-5849. This production is now closed.

RECOMMENDED

Playwright Yussef El Guindi is mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore. After all, as one of the characters in his new play, “Our Enemies: Lively Scenes of Love and Combat,” remarks early on, “Who isn’t pissed off these days?” In El Guindi’s engaging and robustly performed satirical race drama for Silk Road Theatre Project, the three central characters, all immigrants navigating the tricky waters of Western assimilation, all three consumed with issues of race and representation via the media machine (they are writers) and all three feeling the pressure to—culturally speaking—stand for something, are more noteworthy for celebrating Arab-American angst and anger than for being the conduits by which a non-Arab-American audience member may understand it. And that, unfortunately, renders a lot of “Our Enemies’” political anger insular and ineffectual, even though as relationship drama—a tricky love triangle develops between the two men and the woman they share—the piece remains entertaining throughout, thanks largely to committed performances across the board. I was, however, disappointed that the white characters were filtered through such an exaggerated and stereotypical playwriting lens—the swishy homosexual/patronizing book publisher; the pretentious Tina Brown-like literary queen bee; the condescending and culturally ignorant Larry King-like talk-show host. I’m guessing this is a deliberate choice, and one that confirms El Guindi’s newfound flirtation with satire. But, compared to his other characters, and especially when played alongside some of his most poignantly and earnestly written dramatic scenes to date, the results can be jarring and the playwright doesn’t seem to have found a unifying tone. At least El Guindi hasn’t lost his trademark cheekiness—one character describes himself as “the new Arab Zorro fighting back with birthday cake and lip stick” (trust me—it’s a hilarious quip that will make sense in performance). And while his dialogue still dazzles, a leaner script would have accomplished the same, especially when its entertaining garrulity seems to hammer away at the same old questions of race and identity without gleaning much insight. Following this author’s previous and increasingly ambitious output, from “Ten Acrobats’” humor as therapy to “Back of the Throat’s” fear as catharsis, “Our Enemies” is not as satisfying, trying too hard to say too much, nor does it offer as much dramatic payoff via an ending that smacks of contrivance. Nevertheless, it’s topical, accessible yet still exotic, and like all of his plays, a gift for strong actors. (Fabrizio O. Almeida)

At the Chicago Temple, 77 W. Washington, (888)745-5849. This production is now closed. 

By Mary Kroeck

It seems as though it always takes some catastrophic event that cannot be ignored to push a foreign culture into the mainstream of American culture. Not too far back in our country’s history, when Africans were forced to live in this country though acts of slavery, the Civil War brought them independence. When the great migration of Europeans struck the shores, they came in numbers that were too enormous to be ignored, and thus were mingled into the Great Melting Pot by there being no other choice. When planes struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon nearly seven years ago, the Arab and Muslim culture was thrown into the forefront of our society and is just beginning to take steps into assimilating into the threads that tie America together.

Yet, this process isn’t one that is easy for any race to go through. However, the outlet the arts provide is giving voice to a culture that has been so often negatively portrayed through the Silk Road Theatre Project’s world premiere of Yussef El Guindi’s “Our Enemies: Lively Scenes of Love and Combat.”

“I always wanted to explore the issue of Arabs in the media,” El Guindi says. “How many times do you hear positive stories about Arabs and Muslims? [The play questions] how do you have your voice heard when there is so much baggage attached to your particular ethnic group? How can you express yourself individually when people are going to foist on you a particular agenda? How do you deal with that as a writer?”

The three protagonists in “Our Enemies” are writers who are trying to discover how to function in a society that portrays them in a particular light. They are trying to get past the stereotypes that are placed upon them to find themselves and define who they are by more than their race.

“When I start to write a play I don’t actually say, ‘Oh, this is going to be a play about such and such,’” El Guindi says. “I have an idea, I hear a voice and I have a sense of who these characters are. I have a few plot points in mind, a beginning, a middle and an end, a faint skeleton of where I’m going and then I just go. I’m not trying to figure out what the play is about but something is just drawing me through… In a sense, the struggle of immigrants trying to fit in, to find their voice and be heard is what connects all of my plays.”

El Guindi himself is an immigrant. Born in Egypt and raised in London, El Guindi was accepted into Carnegie Mellon University for graduate school to study playwriting then decided to become a U.S. citizen.

“There came a point where I had to choose whether to return to London or if I wanted to stay here. Being in America felt like more of an adventure,” he says. “I like that this is a country of immigrants, essentially. Aside from the Native American tribes, everyone is an immigrant… We’re all immigrants here and I like that.”

It is through that pool of immigrants and their experiences that Silk Road Theatre Project chooses the work it produces. The theater’s main mission is to showcase work from playwrights of Asian, Middle Eastern and Mediterranean descent whose pieces concentrate on relevant themes of the people across the historic Silk Road, which stretches from Italy to Japan. The theater began in response to the 9/11 attacks. El Guindi’s collaboration with Silk Road Theatre Project began in 2005 when its artistic director, Jamil Khoury, wanted to produce the world premiere of El Guindi’s “Ten Acrobats in an Amazing Leap of Faith,” which was received an After Dark Award for Outstanding New Work. In 2006, Silk Road Theatre Project produced El Guindi’s acclaimed work “Back of the Throat,” which received an After Dark Award for Outstanding Production.

“Jamil’s mission is broader and wants to cover voices from the whole Silk Road,” El Guindi says. “I think they do a great job of finding those voices and serving those voices well. I’m a big supporter of Silk Road. Even if they weren’t producing my work, I would want a company like Silk Road to exist.”

Outside of theater, El Guindi thinks that in order for stereotypes of Arab and Muslim Americans to be broken, the community as a whole must become more open to letting others understand the cultures.

“There are so many stories that mainstream culture doesn’t hear about,” El Guindi says. “It’s important that Arabs and Muslims enter the cultural conversation. I hope that people write more and more stories, become active in the conversation, pick something; be a photographer a painter, just start… Step up to the plate and the cultural room has to be made on the shelf.”

“Our Enemies: Lively Scenes of Love and Combat,” at the Silk Road Theatre Project, 77 West Washington, (866)811-4111. This production is now closed.

A Muslim Shylock in a post-9/11 world? Peculiarly, that is what Indian-American playwright Shishir Kurup’s proposes in Silk Road Theatre Project’s world premiere of his “Bard meets Bollywood,” freely adapted Hindu vs. Muslim version of Shakespeare’s already problematic and many feel anti-Semitic “The Merchant of Venice.” Such a cross-cultural transposition might work if Kurup had made Shylock a Parsi or Zoroastrian, a tiny Persian religious minority in India that, like Jews in Europe, were so discriminated against that they had no property rights and therefore became accountants and bankers. But there is a severe credibility problem with a Muslim moneylender in that the Quran expressively forbids charging or paying interest of any kind; kind of like if the Bard had made Jewish Shylock, say, a pig farmer. It also doesn’t help in a day and age where you can YouTube real beheadings by Islamic extremists that “Sharuk” (Anish Jethmalani) is costumed like an al-Qaeda recruit poster and screams and shouts that he wants his pound of flesh. When that climactic moment does come, Shakespeare’s familiar finale is ditched and detoured for a change of heart and a sudden Hindu sermon on the co-dependency of the universal soul to the individual soul. Dramaturgically, this would be like inserting a Christian “Love your neighbor” speech into the Bard’s original, since Jews—or in this case, Muslims—apparently need Christian (or Hindu, respectively) help to be able to do that. That level of insight makes the Shakespeare’s original seem like a treatise on tolerance by comparison. (Dennis Polkow)

At the Chicago Temple Building, 77 W. Washington, (888)745-5849. This production is now closed.