Comedy of suffering in a Lebanese-US Maronite family
Irfan Shamji and Erik Sirakian in ‘Sons of the Prophet’: Photo by Marc Bremmer.jpg
Daniel Nelson
Grief, death, illness, disability, suffering, loss: Sons Of The Prophet is sn Christmas comedy.
It really is. There’s even a Christmas tree.
Award-winning playwright Stephen Karam takes a Lebanese-American Maronite family in rural Pennsylvania, starts their story with a fatal car crash, and follows it up with two hours of witty dialogue about their consequent trials and tribulations.
It’s about family, but it has cutting observations on generational divides in migrant families, on the appropriate punishment for careless criminality, on media morality, on the parochialism of small-town USA, on Khalil Gibran - the best-known US-Lebanese writer, on US health care - and, of course, on some White folks difficulty (or reflex unwillingness?) to get their mouths round unfamiliar names (in this case, Douaihy).
What it also has in abundance is humanity. Karam (himself raised in the Maronite faith) emphasises in a note on the text that “all the characters are equally human. Eschew broad comedy and characterizations…” They are people, not stereotypes. One of the characters blurts out ridiculous comments that you laugh at, but she is not ridiculous; another makes aggravating statements, but has some sincerity.
Karam doesn’t fully live up to his admonitions. The young footballer who plays the prank that leads to the death is one-dimensional. (The incident is taken from a real case in which an Ohio judge allows two highschool footballers to continue to play despite their stupidly dangerous actions: “I shouldn’t be doing this, but I’m going to…”). And inevitably in a short play conflicts within characters are utilised but remain undeveloped.
Perhaps the play is best approached as if it were Job as a stand-up comedian laughing at the tribulations that Satan rains down on him.
As one calamity follows another it becomes absurd. What can you do except laugh at what life throws at you? Not everyone shares that sort of humour, and in this case it’s tempered by the vulnerability and moments of awareness of the gay brothers, their uncle, the fallen-from-grace publisher and even the journalist.
It’s akin to some aspects of Jewish humour, which perhaps is not surprising given the Maronites’ 1,000-year history of purges, genocides and mass migrations. Who in Britain has even an inkling of that story or what Maronite Christianity entails?
The play is an entertaining family introduction to that deadly legacy.
Sons of the Prophet, £10-£32.50, is at the Hampstead Theatre, Eton Avenue, NW3, until 14 January. Info: 7722 9301/ https://www.hampsteadtheatre.com/whats-on/2022/sons-of-the-prophet/
+ In the wake of the Arts Council’s decision to stop its financial support to the Hampstead Theatre, on 12 December the theatre announced:
The ambition is to keep Hampstead Theatre open. To continue to create original theatre without creative restriction. To challenge, influence and shape the future of British Theatre.
In light of Arts Council England’s decision to cut Hampstead Theatre’s funding by 100% and with increased running costs due to the energy crisis, compounded by the post-pandemic world from which theatregoing is only just beginning to re-emerge, the theatre needs to create a new business model.
The plan in the short-term is to:
Fulfil its commitment to the season of new plays programmed in the Downstairs space and to reconfigure the main stage and transfer some of those plays to the larger auditorium.
Continue the INSPIRE programme to support new writers, currently funded until March 2024 under Roy Williams, which supports up to 15 playwrights annually.
To seek significant, immediate support from funders and to apply to Arts Council England for transition funding to see the theatre through this period while it develops a new business model.
In the long-term Hampstead Theatre plans to:
Curate a programme of work made up of new and contemporary plays for the main stage.
Continue the commitment to presenting new writing Downstairs.
Continue to support new writers through the INSPIRE programme.
Finance that work through box office sales, philanthropic support, co-production and independent finance.
The success will be to see Hampstead Theatre continue as a creative hub where writers, directors and all theatre-makers can flourish without fear of success or failure. A leading producing house in London’s dynamic theatre ecology, making a completely unique contribution to the London, the UK, and the international theatre scene.