The Who & the What

Polite society often entails a certain amount of organized terror. It governs what we say, how we dress, and whom we’re allowed to marry. Ayad Akhtar digs deep into this terror (and suggests how it can be combated) in his new play The Who & the What,, now making its New York premiere at LCT3’s Claire Tow Theater. Akhtar earned the Pulitzer Prize for drama for his last play at LCT3, Disgraced, which recently announced a Broadway run. The Who & the What has all the transgressive intelligence of that earlier play, but allows more time for the drama to percolate, resulting in a truly explosive climax. On top of that, it’s also quite funny. Afzal (Bernard White) is living the American dream. Originally a humble immigrant from Pakistan, he now owns 30 percent of all the taxicabs in Atlanta. He also has two beautiful daughters from his late wife. Mahwish (Tala Ashe) is a nurse-in-training engaged to her childhood sweetheart, Haroon. Zarina (Nadine Malouf) is a Harvard-educated novelist working on a book about women in Islam. A conservative Muslim, Afzal tries to set Zarina up with Eli (Greg Keller), a local Imam and Muslim convert.