Theatre in Review: Guards at the Taj (Atlantic Theater)

	Arian Moayed. Photo: Doug Hamilton

Is it me, or are our playwrights becoming more devious? They're certainly becoming more ruthless. Suddenly, just recently, we're getting plays constructed like little tinder boxes, rigged to explode on opening; they leave one wondering how they can possibly be described without giving away their incendiary secrets. Last week gave us Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' Gloria, which starts out as a wickedly mean-spirited screwball comedy about magazine publishing before taking a sharp left turn into horror, reconfiguring itself twice more before the final curtain. Now comes Guards at the Taj, which establishes a highly singular premise, then proceeds to deliver one stunning surprise after another.

It is India, in 1648. Humayun and Babur are performing guard duty at the not-yet-unveiled Taj Mahal. Ironically, they stand facing away from the building, which is to be revealed to the world that very day. (It was apparently erected behind a façade of scaffolding.) Friends since childhood, they are a study in contrasts: Humayun is a career man and a stickler for the rules, while Babur is perpetually late, a little bit lazy, and all too likely to indulge in forbidden on-the-job conversation. The playwright, Rajiv Joseph, has come up with a largely contemporary idiom, rendering them accessible to us as they bicker and trade thoughts. "That's insensitive; it makes me sad," says Babur, in response to one of Humayun's reprimands. When Babur wonders if they might get promoted to guard the imperial harem, conjuring up images of acres of naked women, Humayun throws cold water on the prospect, adding, with some asperity, that the harem "is not a house of wanton lusts," adding that only guards far more senior than they are entrusted with such an honor. Babur speculates, "I think God wants us to learn more and more things," a notion that is coolly received by Humayun.

Much of the talk focuses on the building of the play's title. Humayun reports the rumor that the emperor, in order to guarantee that "nothing as beautiful as the Taj Mahal will ever be built again," has ordered that the 20,000 artisans and laborers who worked on it are to be behanded. "Well, I think the emperor is overreacting" -- a line that gets one of the evening's bigger laughs. One of them wonders who will be assigned to such a grisly task. They stare at each other. "Shit," one of them says.

I can't say much more, except that the scene that follows is surely the most gasp-inducing on a New York theatre stage at the moment. This is one production where you can say, without exaggerating, that the stage runs red with blood. For their service to the emperor, Humayun and Babur are to be rewarded with that much-coveted harem position, but intervening events have had a destabilizing effect on Babur, who begins spouting treason. Humayun, trying to forestall a much more vicious punishment, gets his friend convicted for blasphemy, which carries a relatively mild punishment of three days in jail. But this plan spins out of control, resulting in a scene that would be at home on the stage at Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol.

Working from legend -- historians seem to agree that the mass mutilation never happened -- Joseph constructs a taut two-hander that poses a battery of disturbing questions about religious and political absolutism -- Humayun and Babur are Muslims -- and the pursuit of beauty therein. In an especially striking moment, Babur, flagrantly violating the rules of his profession, turns around, effectively abandoning his station, to gaze at the Taj. Struck by its splendor, he stumbles backward. A few minutes later he will be surrounded by one of the most appallingly blood-stained tableaux since -- well, since Atlantic Theatre presented The Lieutenant of Inishmore. Even more shattering is the climactic confrontation between the two men, which culminates in the kind of act rarely invoked by playwrights since the heyday of Jacobean revenge tragedy. No matter how terrible these events may be, it is nearly impossible to look away, partly because of Joseph's skill in making us care about Humayun and Babur, and partly because of the obvious resonances their story has in a world plagued by ISIS and the various branches of Al Qaeda -- not to mention the horrors committed across the centuries by other politico-religious regimes that subordinate the humanity of their followers to abstract notions of the virtuous and beautiful.

Under the authoritative direction of Amy Morton, Guards at the Taj also succeeds as a vehicle for two fine actors whom we should be seeing more often. Omar Metwally is a superb Humayun, lecturing Babur to keep him out of trouble, yet also admitting under pressure that he is driven to please his withholding father, who is also in the guards. When, in extremis, he fiercely insists to Babur that, complicit as they are in a system of extreme brutality, they are, nevertheless, the lucky ones ("This is called keeping the peace."), we see a man holding onto his beliefs by the tips of his fingernails. Arian Moayed is in every way Metwally's equal, whether imagining the future invention of a flying machine, fondly recalling the night they were lost in the jungle and constructed a bed of sandalwood to ward off unwanted animals, or, unhinged by what he has seen, plotting unspeakable acts against the emperor. They capture every nuance of a script that takes them from lightly humorous banter to animal-like degradation.

The production also benefits from an unusually fine physical production. Timothy R. Mackabee's set design consists of an imposing stone wall that opens up to reveal the play's ugliest moments. David Weiner's lighting fluently captures various time-of-day looks, and also treats the set's intricate textures, especially between the scenes, when he fashions a slow-moving, ascending color chase from sidelight. I don't know if Bobby Frederick Tilley II's costumes are historically accurate, but they certainly feel it. The music and sound design, by Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen, combines crickets, birdsong, and a medley of jungle beasts with underscoring that catches the script's hairpin turns of mood.

Guards at the Taj is the latest work from a playwright of remarkable originality and reach. Anyone who can come up with both finely etched cameos of contemporary life, such as Animals Out of Paper, and such boldly theatrical works as Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo and this piece, is a major talent. In an early summer season notable for an out-of-nowhere burst of fine new writing, this is one of the most striking examples, a historical fable that speaks powerfully to the world of today. -- David Barbour