Theatre in Review: First Down (Noor Theatre/59E59)

	Peter Romano, Hend Ayoub

First Down begins with the startling sight of a major league football player, in the team locker room, assuming the Muslim prayer position. It's particularly surprising because the fellow in question, George Berri, has a classically all-American look. But pronounce his name correctly, with the right stresses and accents, and the truth starts to come out. Indeed, George is not who he seems, and, on the eve of the Super Bowl, he has decided to bare it all. "It's time people know who I am," George insists. "And who is that, George?" asks Bill Fitzgerald, his coach. "A Muslim Lebanese football player from Montana," George replies. "Yeehaw."

Bill has long known about George's identity, but he is aghast about George's plan, which involves kneeling and offering a Muslim prayer during the national anthem. "I want the entire country to see it," George insists. Bill, seeing his Super Bowl title slipping away, argues the gesture would be unnecessarily divisive, adding that football is America's great unifier. "As long as you believe Jesus was a white man with blue eyes and relaxed hair -- from the Middle East," George replies.

To be sure, it's an attention-getting premise, albeit one weakened by an artificial dramatic structure that successively dispatches the supporting characters into the locker room for one-on-one debates with George. Also, his eve-of-the-game decision is a forced setup that makes George look naïve and grandiose, undermining his argument. But there's no question that the one-named playwright Sevan produces some crackling confrontations as George's supporters have at him, disabusing him of his illusions. And in Johanna McKeon's taut production, the battle of ideas is fully engaged, sparing none of the combatants.

George needs every ounce of willpower against Marina, his ruthlessly focused agent -- herself an Arab Christian -- who wants to know why, after a lifetime of passing, he must make this announcement right now. She has known him for years, having briefly dated him in college; as she acidly notes, his choice of Notre Dame offered him a "great place to hide. Among the Fighting Irish Catholics." Mentioning their breakup, she adds, "But if we had kept dating -- then what? Do you meet my parents and make them sign an NDA?" She gives him a detailed lesson in religious divisions in their community and institutes a brutal role-play session, tossing out some of the questions he can expect from a hostile press. Getting a rise out of him, she warns, "You're going to have to keep that under control. Don't want to come off as the angry Muslim on TV." As Marina, the gifted Olivia AbiAssi presses her case with unrelenting force.

Next up is Hana, George's widowed mother, who, trying to change his mind, deploys a combination of hard common sense, family history, and maternal guilt tactics. The son of immigrants, George is haunted by the death of his soldier father, killed in the Iraqi War while trying to prove his loyalty to the US. Hana was left alone in Montana with no husband, a limited command of English, and a son to raise. "You think the Americans will accept you," says Hana, who has little use for religion. "You think all Arabs will thank you. You think the Muslims will love you. You think there will be no problems." Her opinion of these propositions is made blazingly clear.

It's a sign of the production's overall skill that, except for a few key phrases, the Hana -- George scene unfolds almost entirely in Arabic, yet it remains thoroughly understandable. (The dynamics of fraught mother -- son relations are universal.) Projections are employed, however, for Hana's stunning aria, recalling the bitterly humiliating incident that George is too young to remember (even though he was present), which crystallizes her American experience. As Hana, Hend Ayoub finds the steel buried just under her character's warmly maternal surface.

As Bill, Larry Bull offers an engaging history lesson, positing pro football as a form of social glue in post-World War II America; if he is partially blinded when it comes to race, his affection for George is evident and his ideas are eloquently presented. Especially in his tender sparring with Ayoub, Peter Romano is remarkably effective as George, considering that his fuzzily conceived character is the play's greatest weakness. George doesn't attend mosque -- he taught himself Arabic and studied Islam without help from his parents -- and it is unclear how observant he is. Furthermore, the script never explains why he doesn't wait until the Super Bowl is over, and his sports-hero status has become unassailable, before making telling the truth about himself. And although he is apparently devoted to his fellow team members, won't this gesture prove disruptive on the biggest day of their careers? George keeps citing the case of Colin Kaepernick, but they aren't comparable. Kaepernick didn't rise to fame hiding his ethnicity and religion, leaving himself open to charges of disingenuousness.

Then again, nothing changes if someone doesn't make the first move, and Sevan gets closer to an understanding of George's motivations in an eleventh-hour speech, listing the names and ages of those killed in the 2019 New Zealand mosque shootings; during this hair-raising sequence and after, Romano convincingly reveals George as eaten up with suppressed anxiety and rage, feelings that must come out if he isn't going to implode.

McKeon's production also benefits from Jacob A. Climer's set, Dina El-Aziz's costumes, and Christopher Brown's lighting; this is one of the better-looking shows to be seen in 59E59's Theatre C. The preshow sound and video display -- a montage of football scenes set to hip-hop and rock songs, including "We Will Rock You" -- is rather more invasive than necessary, but a final montage, featuring football games, patriotic displays, and anti-Muslim demonstrations, is a tribute to the skills of sound designers Uptown Works (Daniela Hart, Bailey Trierweiler, and Noel Nichols) and projection designer Stivo Arnoczy.

It's an imperfect evening, to be sure, but I'm betting you'll remember the sparks generated by clashing points of view rather than the shaky structural issues; Sevan isn't afraid to let each character have his or her eloquent say and a thorny, painful issue gets a thorough and entirely stimulating working over. The production introduces a playwright well worth watching and showcases a theatre company that all of us should know better. First Down stands with George, but it isn't afraid to consider that even if he makes sports history, his heroic social statement will come with all sorts of asterisks attached. --David Barbour