BY ADAM M. SCHENCK
“Bars and Measures,” like the emotive Guthrie play “Disgraced,” takes as its theme the intersection of Islam, terrorism and our politics. The characters have their traits and flaws: Bilal (Ansa Akyea) is a hotheaded convert to Islam and a talented jazz bassist. His younger brother Eric (Darius Dotch), a pianist, visits Bilal at his jailhouse visiting room to jam vocals. Bilal awaits federal trial for materially supporting terrorism.
The setting of 2005 recalls for me powerful images of the war in Iraq turning into an unmitigated quagmire while George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld spun tall tales of vicious enemies for whom we needed “to take the gloves off.”
That’s the political context that led to Bilal’s entrapment and prosecution, but the audience feels little of those years—the odd decade of the 2000s (or Aughts). The Aughts loom as a time we still must interpret and make sense of. Today’s political season is merely an offshoot. Unfortunately, “Bars and Measures‘” does not clarify that awful American decade.
It seems that the strengths of McClinton’s direction, which led to awards for his work with August Wilson (of Black Arts Movement fame), here feel oddly diffident and prone. With Wilson, the script can do the work, but not with up-and-comer playwright Idris Goodwin.
One piece of this play which I found very entertaining was the delightful and rapid costume changes from the other two cast members (costumes by Trevor Bowen and wardrobe management by Mary Farrell). Actors Taous Claire Khazem and Maxwell Collyard interpret a variety of characters with much verve—verve which goes sadly to waste because none of the characters in this play change in identity or understanding.
Other elements of the production speak to the strength of artistic director Sarah Rasmussen’s new Jungle leadership. The lighting (by Michael Wangen) creates the jazzy clubs and soul-crushing cell blocks which set this play. An off-kilter floor puts the action in the audience’s face (scenic design by Andrea Heilman). One of this play’s true strengths is an original score from Justin Ellington, who shows he can write jazz compositions as the play’s characters do.
Like Orson Welles showed, theater can be a magic act when actors, production and audience join to create an imagined world more luminous than our own—a world this production of “Bars and Measures” fails to imagine.
Bob Dylan wrote that “money doesn’t talk; it swears.” The same is true of power. A real man depicted in this play, Tarik Shah, will not step out of prison until 2018. The context of the play should outrage us: a war based on false pretenses; the way politics can make an entire religion suspect; how Tarik Shah got convicted primarily because of his loose talk only after being coaxed to speak by a paid government informant.
It’s perplexing and odd that “Bars and Measures” creates neither outrage nor rawness. I had to go to Tarik Shah’s Wikipedia page to discover that another man, Dr. Rafiq Sabir, claimed he was set up by Shah. But Sabir is not even a character here.
The play’s scenario has much theatrical possibility—politics, intrigue, betrayal, lust—which go unused. I look forward to the Jungle Theater capitalizing on its tradition in future productions.
Adam M. Schenck can be reached at [email protected].
