Food and Fadwa–Closing soon!
“Food and Fadwa,” Lameece Issaq and Jacob Kander’s play, directed by Shana Gold and co-presented by New York Theatre Workshop and Noor Theatre, is wonderful, entertaining, funny, moving, and thought-provoking. It’s a well-made family comedy/drama, with familiar archetypes—young lovers, a disapproving father, an unworthy woman coming between the heroine and her man—rendered fresh and nuanced here.
Less centrally, but equally importantly, it’s also a play about Palestinian life in the West Bank under Israeli occupation, demonstrating its challenges and difficulties in theatrical moments that are, in turn, quiet and shocking, hilarious and bitter, and moving. Another way of putting this is that the young lovers face obstacles both from classical comedy (a disapproving father, a rival) and current international-political reality (the groom’s disappearance the day before the wedding, a curfew trapping the family in their home). Their lives are out of their control in more than one way. The play focuses on a family while also dealing with political realities, touching on larger political issues, coexistence, from an authentic-feeling place rooted in traditionally female spaces (home, kitchen) and activities (cooking, caring for family, preparing for a wedding).
One comment on “Food and Fadwa–Closing soon!”
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I could not find a place to comment on your blog in Summer 2012 on your review of “The Lyons”. I did not see the play, have seen some TV commercials for it. I can only comment that while you saw nothing funny about it, in reading what you wrote about the show, perhaps the writer is using comedy to survive his own experiences. My brother and I are in our 50s and we suffer from our mother’s narcissistic personality disorder. When I visit, I lay in bed at night rehashing the day with her seeing myself at The Improv doing a stand up comedy routine about her. My humor (and therapy) has helped me overcome her venomous words and actions. I will spare you the history but ask you look at the show through the eyes of people who have the ability to laugh at the heinous behaviors of the one person in your life who should be loving and nurturing, at least some of the time. You mentioned in your review that perhaps you are of the wrong generation, you didn’t say how old you are, narcissism cuts across generations as does the hurt.