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Play of the week: Disgraced, Bush Theatre, London W12

 

Michael Coveney
Thursday 06 June 2013 13:19 BST
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Disgraced distils arguments about race and religion in a boulevard comedy setting of a dinner party
Disgraced distils arguments about race and religion in a boulevard comedy setting of a dinner party

An unnerving frisson runs through the nimble wit, toughness and pressing "now-ness" of New Yorker Ayad Akhtar's new play.

It distils arguments about race and religion in a boulevard comedy setting of a dinner party on the Upper East Side, then booby-traps the host, and the audience, in a messy post-prandial meltdown.

Above all, it shows how the intellectual fall-out from 9/11 is still radioactive among the professional classes: Hari Dhillon's Amir is a lawyer of Pakistani extraction hoping for a partnership in a Jewish company.

Much of it goes beyond the heat any of us might generate at dinner, but the play's cleverness lies in its roots in everyday "sounding off".

020 8743 5050; bushtheatre.co.uk to 29 June

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