Dale Albright, Denmo Ibrahim
Through November 20 - Our Enemies: Lively Scenes of Love and Combat at Thick House. I was already planning to give this new Golden Thread production a rave after seeing it last weekend. Then Tuesday happened, and suddenly a play about contemporary Arab American identity seems especially urgent. The spectacular Denmo Ibrahim is riveting as Noor, an Egyptian American writer who is shopping around her romance novel only to find that one potential publisher wants to market her in a more political manner than she is comfortable with. Meanwhile Noor's boyfriend Gamal (James Asher) is starting to act out on his distaste for how certain Arab Americans are portraying themselves in the media, particularly targeting young author Mohsen (Kunal Prasad) and a local sheikh (Munaf Alsafi). Playwright Yussef El Guindi masterfully weaves together the characters' interlocking tales, skewering how the media often reduces Muslims to one-dimensional caricatures and allowing for complexity in the exchanges in his own script. No one comes out perfect, which is perfect because no one is.