The Shadow of the Patriarch
‘The Who & the What’ Examines Faith and Family
Charles Isherwood
June 16, 2014: Matters of faith and family, gender and culture are stirred together into a fiery-flavored stew in The Who & the What, the probing new play by Ayad Akhtar that opened on Monday at the Claire Tow Theater at Lincoln Center. Like Mr. Akhtar’s Disgraced, which won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize and will be seen on Broadway this fall, this new work considers the itchy frictions that emerge when religious belief and contemporary life rub up against each other, as they do for the family at the center of the play, a Pakistani immigrant and his two grown daughters. In this case, a novel that attempts to humanize the prophet Muhammad ignites an ugly rift that threatens to rip the family permanently apart. As the play opens, Zarina (Nadine Malouf), a Harvard graduate, has become bogged down in her attempts to start a new book about “women and Islam.” She put her personal life aside, after breaking up with her fiancé, when her father, Afzal (Bernard White), a devout Muslim, persuaded her not to marry outside the faith.
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