THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

Don't be fooled by the first few scenes in Rohina Malik's play—or the second, or the third, for that matter. Yes, there's comedy, and family squabbles, and a romance—but romance, remember, can be dark and forbidding in its refutation of death, beneath whose shadow we all dwell, especially when those shadows are invoked by global discord. Our author doesn't make it easy, either, threatening to take her story in a different direction every time we think we know what will happen next.

Sam—birth name: Abdul Samee—adopted his anglicized sobriquet to facilitate his career as a financial analyst, but his attempt to assimilate did not prevent his preppie wife divorcing him. Yasmina wears a hajib, paints harrowing images of war's devastation and directs her energies toward founding an advocacy group for young Muslim women. Sam's Iraqi immigrant father and Puerto Rican mother are eager for their son to re-marry, but since his pursuit of independence has rendered him unacceptable for doctrinaire clan alliances, they are willing to settle for a refugee bride, whose father was a dentist in Baghdad, but in the United States is fit only to drive a taxi.

Meddling parents aren't the only obstacles on the rocky road to you-know-what, even in the relatively safe haven of sanctuary city Chicago. While Sam chafes under the prejudices of his business associates and multicultural kin, Yasmina is haunted by memories of atrocities suffered in the flight from Iraq to Syria, and then to Turkey, before finally arriving in North America. Despite the misgivings which both are smart enough to recognize, a friendship blossoms based in a shared quest to improve the lot of their marginalized peers, and if their path doesn't lead to happy-ever-after, at least it doesn't turn back.

The cast assembled for this remount of the premiere production at Berwyn's 16th Street Theatre deftly navigates the swift tonal changes demanded of Malik's savvy and stereotype-free script. Repeating their roles under the direction of Ann Filmer are Susaan Jamshidi and Micheal Perez as the cautious lovers, along with Laura Crotte and Amro Salama as the latter's appropriately clueless dam and sire, joined by Rom Barkhorder as Yasmina's loyal, but likewise befuddled, dad and Allen Gilmore as their wise and sympathetic African-American Imam, himself all too familiar with the troubles arising from interethnic tensions.