Patient Refugee Rhapsody, by Yussef El Guindi, Dr. 2's Diagnosis

Patient: Refugee Rhapsody

Parents: Yussef El Guindi

Insurance: Paperkutz

Symptoms: star-struck, poverty-stricken

Diagnosis: It came from the bargain bin.

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Bio:

Playwright Yussef El Guindi won the American Blues Theater, Blue Ink Award for 2021. Out of 820 submissions, it's hard to imagine how poor the runner ups were if Guindi was the paid champion. The American Blues Theater should be charged a fine by the drama police for quadruple the amount, under the charges of praising false talent.

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Patient Description:

Sakinah and Fouad are callused lovers, working at the second-hand shop, Goodwill. One fateful day, they stumble upon some fancy dresses that turn out to belong to a local aristocrat, Emily. Emily voices sympathy and action for the current affairs of the Middle East at one of her parties. Sakinah and Fouad crash one of these parties—with Fouad in drag—wearing one of Emily's old dresses found at Goodwill.

The party was over quick. Emily is an impossibly magnanimous white devil, while Fouad is the starving, kicked puppy she's been looking to nurse into a show dog. Guindi intended to portray this personality contrast, but both characters are saccharine off the charts: Emily breastfeeding Fouad thousand dollar caviar along Fouad's simpleton monologues of gratitude. 

It was a consistent cringefest. I literally just kept cringing and cringing and cringing, every time Fouad congratulated Emily on being rich, and when Emily apologized for it. These characters had zero impact.

The play script had a horrible case of the maybies in the directing parentheticals. (X and Y do Z—maybe?) (Lights dim for X's entrance—maybe?)

The only character of merit is Sakinah. She's used to a hard life; so she was pre-conditioned to handle the story's rigor. She stands in-between the two worlds Guindi means to collide: the irreverent white world that knows nothing of third world suffering, and the scrappy world itself that prefers not to talk about it at glamorous fundraising parties. 

For a play that attempts to mock racial fawning from white America, Guindi is ironically his own target. There is nothing more than faint mentions of Middle Eastern struggles that have brought this incomplete play to an adoring limelight. What is there to observe, in a play merely requesting we observe?

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New Patients

Patient Shadows by Laurie Goodwoman, Dr. 2's Diagnosis

Patient: Shadows

Parent: Laurie Goodwoman

Insurance: Paperkutz

Symptoms: lights on, lights off

Diagnosis: lights out

Bio:

In 2016, the then called Shadow Puppets was produced by UCLA's Undergraduate Theater Council. Laurie Goodwoman’s plays tackle ideas such as identity and familial relations by challenging the form in which they are presented. She has worked with The Play Company, New Georges, and Pipeline Theatre Company.

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Patient Description:

Two kiddies, both alike in dignity. In one bedroom, we lay our short scene. The sister, Pollux, “Plans” as the brother, Castor, “Goes.” That’s pretty much as far as the plot “Goes.”

The intro was a diva-strutting banger that promised the audience a world of under-the-sheets meaning. The playwright demanded the setting incorporate a pillow fort, lest one have to “omit the Shadows from the production”. Lest the play, Shadows, be unplayable?

The unconventional, two-sided writing structure of the script was a convincing, new feature. The Doctor appreciates all deviations from Samuel French’s crusty, Christian, centered pages. The dual format was essentially clever: as it was a projection of the visual staging during the ping-pong dialogue.

After that, there’s no story onstage. It’s likely in the peripheral room next door, where the parents “are supposed to be asleep.” The kid characters become drunk with telling: never clever, even at a standard for kids. Instead of living out the story, it’s consistently and briefly mentioned. To add to the pain of decoding a second-hand story, it’s s u r r e a l.

Castor “Goes.” Pullox “Plans” something else. There is an assumption conflict, but never a play of it. The lullaby duet was the last time the unique format shone. The denouement was a tumble that finally welcomed a fashionably late plot. Meaningful cues from the playwright parent such as crossed out text had zero impact because of the lack of story leverage.

While the patient was well grounded on a creative platform, the story described is an abyss that no bedtime flashlight can pierce through.

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New Patients

This play review of Laurie Goodwoman’s Shadows is by Mr. Bohemian.