I fairly benefit from the lowkey pleasures of Stephen Karam’s Sons of the Prophet on the Hampstead Theatre
“We’re like the Kennedys without the sex appeal”
Stephen Karam’s Tony award-winning The Humans wasn’t a play that set my soul on fireplace and so information of the arrival of one other of his dramas, additionally a Pulitzer Prize finalist, received a measured response chez Clowns. Written 4 years earlier than The Humans, 2012’s Sons of the Prophet additionally marks the primary new manufacturing since a turbulent time for the Hampstead Theatre.
Bijan Sheibani’s manufacturing leans exhausting into Karam’s hyper-naturalism, overlapping dialogue and multitrack conversations lead us into the trials and tribulations of Joseph, a homosexual American Maronite Christian in rural Pennsylvania coping with a well being disaster, associated monetary worries and above all, the demise of his father as the results of a school prank.
In the cleverly conceived openness of Samal Blak’s design, the tangled conversational threads of Joseph’s buddies, household and work colleagues play out in a fashion that dances out and in of considerate perception and on a regular basis mini-dramas. The temper could be very a lot lowkey, generally to the detriment of the comedian beats of the writing, however I fairly loved the quirky distinction right here.
Irfan Shamji’s Joseph is successfully drawn, his pain-ridden physicality convincing, bleeding into his each interplay, and there’s an actual reference to Jack Holden’s awkwardly flirtatious reporter. And the dynamics of this Lebanese-American household – distantly associated to author Kahlil Gibran – are given actual character from brother (Eric Sirakian’s good Charles) to uncle (Raad Rawi’s Bill).