The Ally at the Public Theater in New York: Back to the Agora

Can one truly be sympathetic until the ultimate consequences to the problems of someone who is not part of “one’s tribe”? If one is not eager to investigate a serious moral dilemma one should stay away from “The Ally”, the world premiere production of Itamar Moses’s new play staged by Lila Neugebauer at the Public Theater in New York. But if one doesn’t shy away from live debates, this play of ideas is exactly what one needs to better understand contemporary queries and maybe, just maybe, figure out which direction this world is going to and how can all of us try to be part of the solution, not of the problem(s).

See, this above formulation is one of the current tropes ironized by the playwright, alongside others, such as “what-about-ism” or “pink-washing”. They are part of an increasingly suffocating “woke grid” which – applied to really complicated issues of our times – risks to become as dangerous as the arguments of the opposite side, namely right-wing white supremacy anti-minorities ideology.

The nuances of the debate between what today stands as “the good” and “the evil” are carefully mapped out in this well-documented history infused play which mainly translates as a full on – even if somehow disguised – political debate. All these layers are connected by the main character, professor and writer Asaf who incorporates various identities: Jew, leftist, atheist, liberal progressive intellectual. He wants to stand with black people and with Palestinians, he is fighting injustice, BUT… When all these fights converge at accusing the state of Israel of genocide, Asaf instinctively stops agreeing with those whose ally he has been until then. More than that, he feels a series of questions are missed in the rush to find a culprit for the misery of the world, so he starts asking. Isn’t Jewish people a discriminated one too?  Isn’t antisemitism a real threat again, even if the world knows what happened “the last time”? The last time when people did not paid attention to the dangers of extremism, to the explosive words and deeds against an ethnic minority? Are Jews safe today only because the Holocaust was such an outrageous crime against humanity? Is this outrageousness a guaranty it will never happen again? And what is the connection between the horrors of the past and contemporary crimes against other ethnic minorities? Can people hold hands and fight all these crimes together and at the same time, instead of comparing them to see which one is worse? Is solidarity even possible anymore in today’s polarized climate, where reality is successfully contested by fake news, straight out lies or waves of ignorant “opinions” shared on social media?

Ben Rosenfield and Josh Radnor in The Ally. Photo credit Joan Marcus

Of course, there are more questions than answers in this smart and sometimes funny despite the subject production directed by Lila Neuberger, and this is how it should be. The inspired directorial decision to place it in the round space of The Anspacher, with almost no stage design, except the lights and some chairs, reminds us that theatre is an agora where concepts like democracy can and should be revisited and in-depth analyzed. A place where ideas can roam free and feelings are seriously taken into consideration, as one of the characters – a black woman rabi – thoughtfully underlines. Here we can and we should allow ourselves be impacted by them, take them seriously and act accordingly, but without forgetting that we might hurt others.

Josh Radnor (How I met your Mother, Fleishman is in trouble) gives Asaf, the writer teaching at a small college in a typical college town where he moved from New York to follow his wife, all the nuances of doubt, which is not easy especially because he confronts individuals convinced that they are right. His ex-girlfriend Nakia (Cherise Boothe) and his student Baron (Elijah Jones) are rightfully fighting the injustice against black people, other students, Farid (Michael Khalid Karadsheh) and Gwen (Joy Osmanski) are organizing events in support of the Palestinian people and they want him to join them, while yet another student, Reuven (Ben Rosenfield) confronts Asaf to ask him why he doesn’t show more support for the Jewish people. Fueled by bias confirmations, their convictions initially take him by surprise and make him move in opposite directions, joining a cause after another, hesitating until he finally stands his ground and starts asking more necessary questions, activating his critical thinking, even if this makes him a coward in some people’s eyes. His wife Rachel, played with discreet undertones by Madeline Weinstein, is the mirror in which he looks at times, reflecting troubling consequences of rush decisions.

Josh Radnor in the world premiere production of The Ally, written by Itamar Moses and directed by Lila Neugebauer. Photo credit Joan Marcus.

Asaf is clearly an avatar of the playwright, as Itamar Moses has been a long time preoccupied by how people divided by historical conditions can still find the common ground. In the musical The Band’s Visit (opened on Broadway in November 2017, based on an Israeli 2007 film) in which an Egyptian band invited to play in an Arab Cultural Center gets lost in a small Israelian desert town, he explored how human beings can rise above their ethnicity and discover what they share deep down and what they love about each other.

Dividing times call for an extra effort towards dialogue, so that democracy is not lost, even if it is clearly in danger in many parts of the world, including US. The gathering place where democracy was born – the Agora – is the best environment for a lively exchange of arguments.  The Ally is the fiery spark that starts a fire meant to signal the danger while shedding light on how to build a bridge over the divide.

THE ALLY has been extended through Sunday, March 24 at The Public Theater