‘The Ally’ Review: Social Justice as a Maddening Hall of Mirrors

Since this is a lawsuit, let’s start with the facts. Asaf Sternheim, who, like Penn, teaches writing at a university, is asked by a former student, Baron Prince, to endorse a manifesto. The manifesto seeks justice for Baron’s cousin, Deronte, who was killed by police officers while being apprehended for a theft he had nothing to do with.

Also relevant: Asaf (Josh Radnor) is a Jew, albeit the kind who, as he says, subscribes to the “acoustic guitar-based variety” of Judaism. Baron (Elijah Jones) is black, just like Deronte.

And one more thing: the 20-page manifesto, which links violence against black Americans to violence against all subjugated populations, calls for “sanctions against the apartheid state of Israel,” adding that “failures By doing so, the United States will become complicit in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.”

You could feel the “uh-oh” in the audience the night I saw “The Ally,” an important, maddening play by Itamar Moses which opened Tuesday at the Public Theater.

Words like “apartheid” and “genocide,” when applied to Israel and the Palestinians, are sure to startle many people. But challenging the use of those words will anger others just as much. Right in the middle is Asaph, who in the piece is then put through a tribal-political wringer that leaves him – and me – a limp tea towel.

Whether you think this is a good thing for a play may depend on your tolerance for endless, furious, yet familiar debate. There is no doubt that Moses, whose biography as the Berkeley-raised son of Israeli immigrants closely mirrors that of Asaph, knows the area and all its skirmishes inside out. It often seems that the arguments, from all sides, are taken from personal experiences or from the news.

Baron’s argument is initially the least problematic; the murder of his cousin is a glaring injustice. And as Asaf’s wife, Gwen (Joy Osmanski), notes, endorsing the manifesto will help her too. A university administrator charged with smoothing the campus expansion into a black neighborhood – as Penn has a history of doing – she knows that her husband’s signature will be viewed favorably there, at least compared to his refusal. Asaph signs.

But the decision to put aside his concerns about “apartheid” and “genocide” opens the door to further complications. Walking through that door are representatives of two student organizations: one Jewish (Madeline Weinstein) and one Palestinian (Michael Khalid Karadsheh). Together they seek Asaf’s support for a plan to bring a controversial speaker to campus. The speaker, whose views resemble those of Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, has called for a reconsideration of Israel’s foundational wars and subsequent wars. These wars, usually conceived as defensive, were in fact fought aggressively, he argues, “because the likely outcome was more territorial.”

Another uh-oh.

And so the provocations and groans continue for two hours and forty minutes, which could have been half or twice as long. Soon, Asaph is eviscerated by Reuven Fisher (Ben Rosenfield), a religious Jewish student who tears all the previous arguments to shreds, and, more substantially, by Nakia Clark, the black community organizer who published the manifesto in the first place wrote. No matter how Asaph writhes and moves, everyone, including his wife, finds him guilty of something.

That, admittedly, is the way many progressive Jews feel: unsure how to reconcile their status as part of an endangered minority with their support for others who feel the same way. Why, Asaf asks, does the manifesto envelop all these groups – Palestinians, black Americans, victims of colonialist oppression worldwide – in its protective arms, except one? Aren’t Jews, apart from Israel, precisely the victims of the kind of persecution and violence condemned in the document?

“I don’t believe,” Nakia (Cherise Boothe) finally answers, “that these two struggles are in fact the same struggle. And I don’t let myself be distracted from work.”

If that’s a less than politically satisfying answer, it’s even more dramatic. Nakia, it turns out, is Asaf’s ex, though it’s hard to imagine what they saw in each other, as she’s as unwavering in her positions as Asaf is wobbly in his. And though their scenes burn with an intensity that feels richer than any other in the play — Boothe is especially fearless in the role — the sodden underlay of personal history creates a kind of credibility hole beneath them.

Moses’ earlier works, including the delightful “Bach at Leipzig” and the moving book for “The band’s visit”, successfully combines ideas with plot and character. Here the ideas are so dominant that the plot feels like a Rube Goldberg device and the characters like chess pieces, each with only one type of move. Gwen steers Asaf forward in the direction that will best serve her administrative needs. The student leaders, with only the thinnest veneer of personality, exist only to entrap him. And Asaph himself is little more than a pawn, refusing to step forward. Without Radnor’s hangdog charm, this man of ambivalence, who is only comfortable when he’s in a bind, would be an unbearable caricature.

The production, directed by Lila Neugebauer, makes modest attempts to draw emotion from this, but does not go beyond tension, as the characters circle Asaf in various configurations on the largely empty Anspacher stage. As such, all we are left with is the debate to respond to, which in its irritating back and forth quickly becomes the dramatic equivalent of the how so condemn the characters. Especially since the Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians on October 7, and the Israeli invasion of Gaza shortly afterwards – Moses wrote ‘The Ally’ before those events – we would like a play to be more than a play. Magic 8 ballwhich produces different answers depending on how you shake it.

That’s not to say that ‘The Ally’ is unsophisticated. On the contrary, it is almost too artful, delivering its eloquent arguments in clever pairs of impossible contradiction. If frustration and hopelessness were just feelings worth intensifying, it would win an award for its form-follows-function design.

But I felt the need for more wisdom than craftsmanship. (A feint at this, in the final scene, disappears.) What seems like the fear of making the wrong statement has prevented Moses, just as it prevents Asaph, from making a coherent statement at all. Except perhaps one, and that is not so small in a world of multiple but often superficial loyalties: the difficulty of recognizing the suffering of another group deeply enough to equate it with our own is something we all have in common, after all. to have.

The ally
Through March 24 at the Public Theater, Manhattan; publictheatre.org. Running time: 2 hours and 40 minutes.