Off-Broadway Play Review—“The Ally” at the Public Theater

The Ally

Written by Itamar Moses; directed by Lila Neugebauer

Performances through April 7, 2024

Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, NYC

publictheater.org

Josh Radnor in Itamar Moses' The Ally (photo: Joan Marcus)

In a perceptive program note for his new play The Ally, Itamar Moses describes his feelings as a “left-wing, American Jew with Israeli-immigrant parents” when tackling important current issues. He admits that he is unafraid to say certain things, but when it came to more fraught subjects, he “didn’t know where to begin because what I had to say was too confused, too contradictory, too raw.”

Such honesty is present on every page of The Ally, which is also confused, contradictory and raw in its story of Asaf, a left-wing, American Jew with Israeli-immigrant parents who is not a playwright but a university professor. After he agrees to sign a petition blaming the local police for the death of a young Black man, other students convince him to advise their nonpartisan group to host a controversial anti-Israeli speaker on campus. He becomes the center of a storm where he is accused of being anti-Palestinian, anti-Israeli and a white supremacist.

Moses incisively paints Asaf as the face of the inherent contradictions in a strain of American liberalism: he wants to get involved but doesn’t really stick his neck out while worrying about hurting the very people he hopes to help. But Moses stacks the deck dramatically (if almost surely purposely): Asaf is married to Gwen, who’s Asian; his ex-girlfriend Nakia is not only Black but author of the petition that starts Asaf’s troubles since it also uses the term “genocide” in reference to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and Baron, the student who first asks Asaf to sign that petition, is also Black and the cousin of the cops’ victim.

These characters are joined by pivotal supporting roles—the students who ask Asaf to sponsor their new organization, the Palestinian Farid and the liberal Jew Rachel; and Reuven, a right-wing Jewish student who berates Asaf for his weak-kneed liberalism—who form the core arguments of The Ally.  

Most of the play’s scenes show Asaf with one or more of these characters, their arguments constantly colliding. It’s often thrilling to watch, as Moses’ dialogue has real bite and never condescends, while director Lila Neugebauer astutely keeps the focus on the interactions as well as the words. Take an early conversation between Asaf and Gwen as he becomes more reluctant about signing the petition:

GWEN: I’m not telling you what to do. But if one sentence is your only problem with a, like you said, a 20-page document, then maybe—

ASAF: Well, except there is one other thing.

GWEN: What? 

ASAF: They use the word genocide.

GWEN: What?

ASAF: Here. “Failure to do so will leave the United States complicit in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.” Which, again, so much of what happens there is terrible, truly. But: genocide? That’s a term you really can’t just throw around. Especially ... Well: you know.

After awhile, these discussions, however elegantly written and performed, start to sound like haranguing, like reading a particularly densely written op-ed or even the rare closely argued comment on Facebook. That’s all part of Moses’ point about responding to urgent issues, but even the two tensest scenes come off as strident and singleminded, detracting from their power: Farid’s moving climactic Act 2 speech describing his West Bank family’s hurtful losses loss and, below, Reuven’s forceful Act 1-ending explanation for why Asaf has been duped.

ASAF: I thought it meant “Never Again” for anyone, not just us.

REUVEN: That’s right. It means “Never Again” for anyone. Including us.

ASAF: So you’re saying we can’t even discuss how Israel deals with the Palestinians because to do so will trigger a series of events that will lead inevitably to a second holocaust.

REUVEN: No. What I’m saying is the entire so-called “conversation” around this issue is nothing more than propaganda designed to create the conditions for a second holocaust.

ASAF: I think that’s alarmist.

REUVEN: And I think the people who sounded the alarm last time were also told they were being alarmist.

ASAF: Last time we were a tiny minority scattered across Europe! We didn’t have an army! We didn’t have a nuclear weapon! This time the Israelis are the majority, they have the power, they—!

REUVEN: Compared to who?

ASAF: The Palestinians!

REUVEN: But this conflict is not between the Israelis and the Palestinians!

ASAF: What? Of course it is!

REUVEN: No! It’s only framed this way so one can conclude that Israel is the oppressor! But this is not now, nor has it ever been, an Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which a Palestinian minority is surrounded by millions of Jews. It is and has always been a Jewish-Arab one in which a Palestinian minority is surrounded by millions of Jews who are themselves surrounded by hundreds of millions of other Arabs not to mention the Persians of Iran! Don’t you see? This is how antisemitism works! Why it is invisible to the left unless someone shouts “kill the Jews” and sometimes even then! Because the only xenophobia the left understands is the kind that paints the other as inferior. Jew-hatred depends upon the opposite: a myth of dangerous superiority. “Yes, they are small in number, but they pull all the strings.” Antisemitism adopts the trappings of a strike against the powerful so that it can masquerade as part of a struggle for social justice! As a progressive cause! So when you say we redefine all criticism of Israel as antisemitism you have it backwards: antisemitism was intentionally disguised as criticism of Israel, by our enemies, as a response to the founding of the state! And you can see how effective it has been! It is now impossible for left-wing Western intellectuals to assign any responsibility at all to the Arabs for what goes on in a region they dominate completely! But no one forced the Arab League to invade in ’48, or again in ’67 …

Yet despite its built-in limitations as living, breathing drama (especially since it doesn’t address what’s happened in Gaza since October 7), The Ally remains an intelligent two hours in the theater, its superb cast anchored by Josh Radnor’s formidable Asaf. As the center of the arguments and as Moses’ stand-in, Radnor’s portrayal humanely embodies the raw contradictions and confusions that make up the playwright’s stalwart liberalism.