ABCD
Barrington Stage Company
St. Germain Stage at the Blatt Center in Pittsfield, Massachusetts
Written by May Treuhaft-Ali, directed by Daniel J. Bryant
“I don’t think they like me. They’re yelling a lot.”
When a play is about my life, I am uncomfortable. “ABCD,” having its world premiere at Barrington Stage Company’s Blatt Center on the St. Germain Stage is, luckily, not about me, but it comes perilously close to what I remember about my high school years. Bilal, a refugee from Iraq who is in his junior year at Columbia Preperatory High School, is as close to me and my own experience as he can be. He is different from the others in his class: foreign, religious, wearing a “dress” on Fridays. Not even the girls wear dresses—certainly not Sunghee, an Asian-American girl who does school musicals to be popular. Balil, aiming for Harvard, also wants to be popular but he doesn’t know how. He finds a way, as did I, and he suffers for it, much as I also did. There the similarity ends and a very fine play begins.
Balil has an over-astute father, Ibrahim, who cares very much about his son, his integrity and honesty. The owner of a falafel restaurant he was once a respected scholar in his own country. He wants only the best for Bilal but doesn’t understand what the boy is going through. Juri Henley-Cohn plays Ibrahim so well that when he embarrasses himself in front of one of Balil’s teachers, Ms. Krueger, played with a strong degree of sincerity by Chavez Ravine, it is a truly honest conclusion of a dynamic and well-written scene.
Balil is played with a cautious sense by Justin Ahdoot. He is acting the role of a boy who doesn’t wish to feel strange with Iraqi customs he can barely shake, and no real friends to make him who and what he wants to become. The decision he ultimately makes to recreate himself as popular is, as they always are, a very poor choice. He has been mentored in a way at an inner city middle school by a math teacher named Davon Lawrence—played by Brandon St. Clair—who has problems of his own. Encouraged to lie and cheat by his principal, and former coach, in order to bolster his failing schools financial income, he betrays the trust of his former teacher and best friend, Mika Ramos played beautifully by Maribel Martinez, as well as that of his girlfriend and fellow teacher at Carnegie MiddleSchool, Tamara Gardner, played with feeling by Torée Alexandre.
Director Daniel J. Bryant has worked with the many mini-scenes in Ms. Treuhaft-Ali’s play with the aid of movement director Kevin Iega Jeff and the extraordinary set designed by Baron E. Pugh. If you’ve never before witnessed the magic of live theater, you will in this production as the set pieces move, revolve, unfold, open us and change your perception of how a movie is better than a play. These three, along with lighting designer Jason Lynch and sound designer Fabian Obispo prove you wrong once and for always. Live theater! Yeah!!
Balil and his new friend Sunghee, the remarkable Pearl Shin, make the youthful errors that high school kids can make. Mr. Lawrence goes them one better, or worse if you prefer, fulfilling the demands of his former coach, now principal, Ellis, played to a fare-the-well by Melvin Abston.
As Balil and Davon’s parallel stories gather steam, the playwright dramatically moves them all to a plane where honesty is hardly the best policy and madness looks like the best defense. But this is a morality play and what is right is very right, and what is wrong is punishable.
This is a complex play, a very good one, guaranteed to keep you awake for 94 unending and emotionally exhausting minutes. Barrington Stage has triumphed once again with another world premiere.
“ABCD” plays at the Sydelle and Lee Blatt Center, 36 Linden Street, Pittsfield, MA through July 23. For tickets and information call 413-236-8888 or go to their website.
