L.A. Review: 'Language Rooms'

The setting of “Language Rooms,” Yussef El Guindi’s mercilessly funny and fascinating play being given its Los Angeles premiere by the Latino Theater Company, is a post–Sept. 11 top-secret CIA interrogation facility at an undisclosed location. It’s a shrouded Homeland Security compound that is not supposed to exist. Nevertheless, it’s eerily familiar, not because it brings to mind horrifying Abu Ghraib images—well, not only because of that—but because these nondescript rooms, with their grimy blank walls and cheap office furniture, could be any rooms anywhere. Despite the hidden security cameras, we feel safe enough to empathize with and laugh at the poor souls who are trapped inside them.

Evren Odcikin directs the outstanding cast of “Language Rooms,” four actors who rise to the challenge of Guindi’s complex material and understand every level of the mind games that his play is built on. The wiry James Asher plays Ahmed, an Arab-American translator-interrogator who’s more than happy in his position, serving his country and putting his cultural heritage to good use. But he may be feeling a bit uncomfortable about whether he’s really fitting in. Perhaps that’s because his Asian-American buddy and fellow Muslim, Nasser (William Dao), keeps telling him so. It’s a concern echoed by their African-American boss, Kevin (Mujahid Abdul-Rashid). What with their facility’s nonexistence being called into question, Kevin simply can’t have Ahmed disengaging from the group dynamic, especially if any suspect sympathies are potentially involved.

Round and round we go, circling the drain of Ahmed’s psyche with motivational teamspeak and a hilarious exploration of the personal and political when it comes to cultural identity, power, and the absurd lengths to which a government in fear will go in the name of God and country. Then we meet a new prisoner, Samir (Terry Lamb), and Ahmed’s interrogation takes an unexpected turn. Truly, as Samir says, “immigration is not for sissies.”

Although the production feels a bit awkward on a technical level—Mikiki Uesugi’s suitably dull setting and Odcikin’s staging don’t use the space all that well—and the heady script is not particularly action-packed, the impressive work onstage is more than enough to hold us within the world of Guindi’s terrific play.

Presented by Golden Thread Productions and the Latino Theater Company at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring St., L.A. June 3–24. Thu.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m. (866) 811-4111 or www.thelatc.org.