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People in war zones hang out. They smoke; they gossip. They make up funny dances. To forget this is to deny the real people in these dire situations their humanity and to risk seeing them only through the eyes of charity—helpless, desperate, and without pride. Them, the 2019 play by Samah Sabawi, opens promisingly with a down-to-earth scene: Three young men—two with rifles—stand at a makeshift check point and shoot the shit.
The three are heartbreakingly young, and the two with rifles are wearing their ballistic vests far too low to do much good. Their innocence speaks volumes because they’re exactly the people who run checkpoints in the real world, neighborhood guys with some training.
Mohamed (Trevor Tarantino) holds his rifle securely for about half the time; Majid (Manny Meza) never does, but it works for their characters as two armed resistance fighters in their unnamed hometown. The third man is Omar (Akash Dhruva), a young father, who claims that he could defend his home—if it were really necessary—even as his friends and family tease him for being unable to kill a lamb for dinner.
The trio’s interaction begins in the 10 minutes before curtain and is initially inaudible, mumbling beneath live music: folk horns, drums, and accordion played by Eugene duo Acoustic Pilgrims. It’s the most successful scene in the entire production, which continues for another 90 minutes of increasing melodrama and heavy-handed allegory.
Currently playing as a special event in Portland Center Stage’s Ellyn Bye Studio, this staging of Them is a co-production of University of Oregon and Student Production Association of Lane Community College. It’s directed by UO theatre professor Malek Najjar. If you’re going into a show with that much academic underwriting, you should expect college-level acting, and that’s mostly what we get from this production of Them.
The two who stand apart are the wry and world-weary Dhruva and Dré Slaman, who plays Omar’s fiery sister Salma. Portlanders saw Slaman last spring in Portland Center Stage’s Coriolanus and her flex of weighty stage presence helps end Them on a powerful note. Dhruva’s quick-flowing sarcasm and resilient immaturity give Omar a comedic demeanor that is unshakably Woody Allen. While that’s a loaded description, it’s just too apt to avoid. The fact that Omar is written as a sex pest to his new wife compounds the portrait. It’s still an interesting choice for a character in a play that everyone assumes is about Palestine.
Because Sabawi is a Palestinian playwright, it would be easy to assume that the setting for Them is Gaza, but Sabawi keeps the larger forces bombing apartment buildings and forming resistances anonymous. In a manner that reminded us of Caryl Churchill’s “Far Away,” characters discuss “the resistance” and “the resistance to the resistance,” along with the guard who might invade, and the rebels who the guard wants to bomb.
There are several messages on the wing in Sabawi’s play. In particular, a scene where men with guns stand around complaining about the villainy of women struck us as very apt. It’s too bad that the narrative advances mostly through circuitous bickering. Practically everyone in the cast is guilty of nagging, and since they’re all so unlikable the story’s eventual dramatic reveals felt anticlimactic.
Them is a prescient play, but is it good? This production makes me wonder. Whatever you do, just don’t confuse the worth of an artwork with the cause that inspired it. Those who go to see this staging because they’re thinking about Israel’s callous, destructive, and genocidal military campaign in Gaza, will come out with those views still firm—but perhaps wishing they’d done something else with their evening.
Them plays in Portland Center Stage’s Ellyn Bye Studio, 128 NW 11th, through Sat Aug 23, $15-$30, tickets at pcs.org, recommended for ages 13+
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Suzette Smith
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