Review of Back of the Throat

Excellent review in the Tribune.  Only issue I take is her last
statement: that the scenario that drives the plot may "lack veracity."
 It doesn't.  "Ambush interviews" where FBI agents visit your home or
place of work unannounced to catch you off-guard is a common FBI
strategy/technique and was employed in hundreds, maybe thousands of
interviews post-9/11.  This was confirmed by my uncle-in-law who
worked as an agent for 30 years and only recently retired.


'Back of the Throat' offers taste of civil-rights debate
        

By Nina Metz
Special to the Tribune

American civil liberties have acquired a few bite marks since 9/11,
and playwrights have squared off on this theme with varying degrees of
success. "Back of the Throat," by Seattle-based Yussef El Guindi,
manages to finesse the conversation with far more nuance, wit and
style than, say, Sam Shepard's tantrumlike "God of Hell." What El
Guindi achieves is something closer to Kafka's "The Trial" or
Dostoevski's "Crime and Punishment." The play also happens to be
getting a stellar production by the Silk Road Theatre Project.

It is the company's inaugural show in its revamped space at the
Chicago Temple, which is now the classiest church basement theater in
town. Stuart Carden's crisp direction lives up to the expectations of
the troupe's new venue.

Suspected of possible links to terrorism, Khalid (Kareem Bandealy)
finds himself on the business end of an increasingly nasty
inquisition. Even his name raises a flag, with its phlegmy "back of
the throat" pronunciation.

The interrogators ? Tom Hickey and Sean Sinitski, playing a game of
catch with their good cop-bad cop personas ? soon dispense with their
phony smiles and put the screws to their man. Khalid makes a lot of
claims that could be plausible. Or not. This ambiguity is the play's
strongest asset. It is impossible to get a bead on the guy, but that
is precisely the point; Khalid is a mystery to himself, as well as to
others.

As the tension squeezes as tightly as a blood-pressure cuff (it
dissipates, oddly, when the violence kicks in), El Guindi weaves in
entire swaths of dark, absurdist humor. The feds hand over evaluation
forms and ask Khalid, in all seriousness, to assess their performance.
Flashbacks spill out of the closet, like so many secrets, including
Elaine Robinson's thoroughly amusing, cowboy-hatted stripper. The
G-man as bogeyman characterization feels like a subtle joke too. You
half expect Khalid to channel "Glengarry Glen Ross" and start
sputtering about their Gestapo tactics.

El Guindi's scenario might lack veracity ? it's hard to believe an
interview of this sort would take place in someone's apartment ? but
the paranoia, fueled by legitimate concerns, is as "now" as it gets.





 
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