‘The Who & the What’: Theater Review

Playwright Ayad Akhtar follows up his 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning Disgraced (scheduled for a Broadway run this fall) with another exploration of Muslim Americans wrestling with the culture clash between traditional Islamic beliefs and modern American society. But while his previous play—about a Pakistani-American lawyer who finds his hard-earned efforts at assimilation suddenly falling apart—crackled with a sustained tension, The Who & the What suffers from a tonal imbalance in which its attempts at comic relief detract from its undeniably relevant and powerful themes. Despite its provocative premise and often witty dialogue, the play never quite coheres in sufficiently compelling fashion. The play begins lightheartedly as we’re introduced to widowed patriarch Afzal (Bernard White) and his two grown daughters Mahwish (Tala Ashe) and Zarina (Nadine Malouf). Afzal is the highly successful owner of an Atlanta taxicab company whose ubiquitous ads have made him a local celebrity. Traditionalist-minded Mahwish is eager to get married, but feels compelled to wait until her older sibling does so first.