Arts news and views : Review: "A Perfect Prayer" deftly sets comic coming-of-age in Muslim family

Review: "A Perfect Prayer" deftly sets comic coming-of-age in Muslim family

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Anchorage Daily News

Posted: May 19, 2007 - 2:10 pm

By Sarah Henning
Anchorage Daily News

“When I say the word Muslim, what’s the first word that comes to mind?” asks the professor.

“Terrorists.”

Here, the professor pauses. But he doesn’t boil over. Instead, he says: “Every religion has its plague of fanatics, and Islam is not immune … but what you see on T.V. is not Islam.”

From page one of her script, playwright Suehyla El-Attar unflinchingly confronts Muslim stereotypes. Although “The Perfect Prayer” is, at its core, a comic coming-of-age story, El-Attar makes sure non-Muslim viewers leave the theater with Islam 101. Somehow, she does it all within a completely relatable plot packed with laughs.

Hers is a style that’s hard to pin down, especially since not everyone is at a point where the words “Muslim” and “comedy” seem compatible. But try to imagine a meld of the ethnic comedy in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” and the educational and metaphorical qualities of “Inherit the Wind.”

The staging of “The Perfect Prayer” Friday at Cyrano’s Off Center Playhouse marked the West Coast premiere of a 2006 play that has been staged just a handful of times. Although the play contains some disjointed scenes and redundancies – particularly in the last half – it’s remarkably polished considering how few times it’s been produced.

In it, Hadia is a struggling college student born to Egyptian parents and raised in Mississippi. She’s just starting to figure out who she is independent of her parents’ wishes for “a good Muslim girl.” Her professor father is devout and amusingly cantankerous. He’s a good foil for Hadia’s mother, a soap-opera addict who lays guilt trips like construction workers lay asphalt – thick and trapping.

Their domestic squabbles don’t register high on the Richter scale until Hadia starts dating Adam, a non-Muslim classmate in her father’s “Contemporary Muslim Societies” class. As she embarks on a rebellion spree any Catholic schoolgirl would envy, the playwright is careful not to make her journey predictable.

As Hadia, actress Jamie Pauley makes her Anchorage stage debut. Director Erick Hayden’s risk paid off. She portrays Hadia like a Mandy Moore with an Arabic vocabulary. Pauley is likeably sassy, an expert eye-roller and winsome, but it’s clear her innocence is approaching its expiration date.

Pauley’s rapport with Anthony Oliva as the smart, sarcastic Adam feels completely natural, whether they’re sparring in the classroom, making out, or affectionately teasing each other, throwing around words like “infidel” and “burka” in a way only a Muslim playwright could pull off.

As Hadia's parents, Vivian Kinnaird and Marius Panzarella are pros. Kinnaird’s hysterical over-involvement was helped along by clever lines like “Remember: The most precious jewel you own is your hymen.” The mother character could have easily come across as simply an unlikable, meddling hypocrite. But Kinnaird’s nuanced performance showed the mother as admirable and empathetic, as well.

Because each of the father’s classes provides a few more morsels about Islam, Panzarella carries the burden of edu-taining the audience, and he does so without droning. His character’s epiphany process is the most beautiful in the play. In a tear-inducing moment, he realizes his intolerance of other, less-devout Muslims – including his wife and daughter – is against the teachings of Mohammed, too.

In Panzarella’s performance, especially, the audience benefits from the cast’s close work with consultants from Anchorage’s Muslim community. The dialogue is sprinkled with melodic Arabic, both the parent actors speak in accents, and the entire cast is required to perform some prayer rituals. Although I’m not in a position to say whether all these things are done accurately, they are consistent and artful.

Within El-Attar’s convincing microcosm, she’s able to pile on layers of universal themes on listening, understanding and compromising. Although the same messages could have been sent in the context of any culture, the dearth of attempts to educate Americans about Islam on the post-Sept. 11 stage makes this play particularly daring and important.

The only slightly depressing thing about “The Perfect Prayer” is that the people who could learn the most from this play probably won’t make the effort to get down to the playhouse.

But to be intolerant of them, well, that would go against the spirit of the play.

If you go
“A Perfect Prayer” runs at 7 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sunday until June 10 at Cyrano’s Off Center Playhouse, 413 D St. Tickets cost $17.50. (263-2787, www.centertix.net)
Playwright Suehyla El-Attar will host post-performance discussions May 24-26.

About the playwright
Suehyla El-Attar is an Egyptian American and practicing Muslim who grew up in Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait and Starkville, Miss.
Since 1998, she has lived in Atlanta, working in radio and as an actress. “A Perfect Prayer” is her first effort as a playwright.

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Review: "A Perfect Prayer" deftly sets comic coming-of-age in Muslim family

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