Amir would seem to have everything — a high-paying job at a prestigious New York law firm, a beautiful apartment on the Upper East Side, and a talented spouse whose career as an artist is beginning to take off. But the route to his perch atop the gilded ladder of Manhattan success has come at a price. Born in Pakistan and raised a Muslim, Amir has never completely reconciled his background with his present identity. It’s one or the other, and when, in the course of what was intended to be an intimate dinner party with another couple, Amir’s separate worlds collide, things fall apart, and quickly.
For Ivy Vahanian, who will direct and play Amir’s wife Emily in Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced this weekend at Center Stage Theater, the opportunity to bring this Pulitzer Prize–winning play to Santa Barbara is the culmination of more than a year’s intensive involvement with the material. Cast as Emily in the Washington, D.C., production at Arena Stage by director Timothy Douglas, she followed that well-received run of more than 50 performances by touring with the play in China. Now she’s getting a chance to show her friends and neighbors here why she believes Disgraced is “the cleanest, leanest, most efficient play I’ve ever done.”
Vahanian is not the only one who feels this way about the show, which New York Times critic Christopher Isherwood praised for the “stimulating” impact of its “cut-crystal dialogue.” The setup may be familiar — two couples meeting for dinner in a haute-bourgeois home space — yet the conversation that ensues is anything but. Jory and Isaac, the other couple, are not only close friends; they’re also in business with Amir and Emily. Jory works alongside Amir at the law firm, and Isaac, a gallery owner, is organizing a show that will feature Emily’s art.