Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them

The play begins in a cheap motel room. A beautiful young woman, Felicity, wakes up in bed with a foreign looking man, Zamir. She doesn't remember anything: not meeting him, not marrying him, not engaging in adventurous sex with him the night before.

This is not funny. My brain labels what has unfolded in just two minutes as drugging and raping, and something more than racial profiling, more like overt racism since the look and name of the male character is distinctly Middle Eastern. When Felicity suggests that they get an annulment, Zamir warns her of his temper. So let's add domestic violence to the list of what's wrong with this picture.

And then the sphincter muscle in my brain relaxed and what unfolded was a delightful absurdist farce written by Christopher Durang and impeccably directed by Nicholas Martin.

The play was written for Kristine Nielsen, a gifted comedienne, who plays Felicity's mother, Luella. This is a role of a lifetime. Luella would rather live in the world of theater, it's just more real than her life arranging flowers in a suburban home while attending to her right-wing reactionary husband Leonard, played by the able Richard Poe. Nielsen delivers a comedic line like a fabulously complex cabernet: there is a long, distinct aftermath that plays out for minutes as her face takes us to where her mind wanders. It's luscious and lovely.

No one has lines like Luella. Laura Benanti is gorgeous, a fine comic actress who knows how to use her beautiful face. The mother-daughter relationship is precious and funny, and again, as politically incorrect as this play is, once Felicity finally takes control, she knows how to do it. Audrie Neenan is Hildegarde, a fellow right wing conspiracy believer with a running underwear gag who is madly in love with Felicity's father and Luella's husband Leonard although she insists on calling him Roger. Amir Arison plays a menacing yet accessible Zamir. We had seen him last season in Charles Mee's delicacy Queens Boulevard and I just learned that although he has played a Middle Eastern Muslim and an Indian prince, he is actually of Israeli heritage. He brings intensity to his comic performance. (After the show, we met Amir and his mother and father!) David Aaron Baker rounds out the cast as the moderator and a cartoonish character with tourette's syndrome. Talk about timing!

In addition to some fine and playful writing about theater, and a much broader and less surprising dialogue about terrorism and the need for a shadow government, there is impeccable directing that adds a lot of detailed business to each of the actor's performances. The set helps, too. David Korins did the scenic design, a set that is divided into a pie that rotates, and the action of the play includes the rotation of the set with clever little nuances. I won't go where the play ends up going, but just trust me. It's funny and it works.

The play has been extended through May 3. There are two worthy plays at The Public Theater currently: The Good Negro, which I reviewed two weeks ago, a serious and important play about the early years of the modern civil rights era and this treat, Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them.