ARGUMENTS WITHIN ARGUMENTS

A fiercely intelligent play that challenges
ideas more than it deepens character

Jordan Lane Shappell as Asaf and DeVaughn Asante Loman as Baron

A large, welcoming room lined with stained wood bookshelves greets you when you walk into Theater #2 at Theater Wit’s home on Belmont Avenue in Lakeview. There are three study tables with lamps emitting a soft light. The shelves are lined with an assortment of books—bound library editions, folios, trade paperbacks—and periodicals, both vintage and modern. Above the bookcases, arched windows, framed by a few sprays of ivy, let in the light. The university study effect is so transporting—set designer Joe Schermoly, and props designer Jonathan Berg-Einhorn, please stand up and take a bow—that I was momentarily whisked away to the upper rooms of the Reynold’s Club at the University of Chicago and briefly wallowed in sweet nostalgia. If the set has the same effect on you, hold on to that feeling; there won’t be another peaceful moment in the two-and-a-half hours to come.

Jordan Lane Shappell as Asaf and K Chinthana Sotakoun as Gwen

Set at a university in an unnamed Midwestern town, Itamar Moses’s The Ally examines that most verboten—at least at parties—topic: the Israel-Palestinian conflict, an issue that is so divisive that it is rarely discussed with non-like-minded peers. Asaf is a mild-mannered playwright of historical plays who teaches creative writing at a prestigious university. As the play opens, his wife Gwen is encouraging him to get out a little more, involve himself in the community, get a hobby, so to speak. Asaf agrees but hesitates, backtracks, then moves forward, then changes his mind again. This is an important conversation, even if its content is of little substance. It establishes Asaf’s nature while simultaneously establishing the sequence of the events to follow.

Mira Kessler (from left) as Rachel, Eliyah Arman Ghaeini as Farid and Jordan Lane Shappell as Asaf

Heading out to his university office for office hours, Asaf meets with one of his most talented students, Baron, a lower middle-class Black student admitted to a university where Black people are more likely to work than study. Baron is distraught. It turns out that his cousin was the victim of a clear-cut case of police brutality caught on film. The incident has roiled the campus, and Baron is circulating a manifesto hoping to draw more attention to the case; he’s come to ask Asaf if he would sign it. Reading the manifesto, Asaf finds himself in full agreement until he comes across a single paragraph requiring that signers condemn Israel over its treatment of the Palestinian people and commit to working to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel for its policies. Asaf questions why this paragraph is part of a manifesto against police brutality in the USA, and we are launched into the first of several arguments of the evening.

Mira Kessler as Rachel, Jordan Lane Shappell as Asaf, DeVaughn Asante Loman as Baron, Eliyah Arman Ghaeini as Farid and Sharyon Culberson as Nakia

Smartly directed by Jeremy Wechsler, The Ally is a Russian doll of a play: a series of nested arguments where students and activists from different factions—including Asaf’s ex-lover, a Black left-wing professor, Nekia (a fiery Sharyon Culberson)—convince Asaf of the moral superiority of their stance, twisting and turning him as he seesaws between both sides, increasingly muddled but still refusing to compromise on his principles. The second act takes this further by throwing Asaf into the lion’s den for an excruciating (in a good way) forty minutes as five characters, with exquisite timing, do intellectual battle, their voices and tempers at fever pitch for most of it. This is not a play for the non-confrontational set.

Sharyon Culberson as Nakia and Jordan Lane Shappell as Asaf

The arguments are beautifully written and perfectly calibrated to each other. Moses, who won a Tony for the book of The Band’s Visit and was nominated for a Pulitzer for The Ally last year, is a wonderful writer. I was riveted throughout. It is unusual to encounter a play so ferociously intelligent and even more unusual to encounter one that respects the intelligence of its audience. But all those attributes aside, is The Ally a great play? I’m not sure it is. With the exception of Asaf, all the other characters are merely sketches—facsimiles rather than multidimensional constructs, and sometimes not even that. Asaf’s wife Gwen is a particularly egregious piece of writing, and it is fortunate for this production that her essayer K Chinthana Sotakoun is superb, giving the character depth and likability even as the script twists her in random directions to serve the needs of the plot.

Eliyah Arman Ghaeini as Farid, Mira Kessler as Rachel, DeVaughn Asante Loman as Baron, Jordan Lane Shappell as Asaf and Sharyon Culberson as Nakia

The actors are uniformly excellent, though if I had to pick my favorite of the supporting cast, in addition to Sotakoun, I’d give the soft-spoken Asante Loman pride of place. And as Asaf, Jordan Lane Shappell is simply magnificent. On stage from curtain up to down, he carries the play. His evolution from Pollyanna to a raging fury never rings false or stretches credulity for even a moment. This is an actor in complete command of his craft and his character.

Sharyon Culberson as Nakia and Jordan Lane Shappell as Asaf

So, what do we make of all this? That’s a difficult question. Moses set himself an impossible task with this play. Without intellectual honesty, the entire enterprise would fall apart. But to be intellectually honest, he has to eschew appeals to emotion—and emotion is what makes most works of art resonate with their audience (unless it’s a work by Stanley Kubrick). For all its literary brilliance, in the aftermath, The Ally doesn’t really linger as a whole. Its arguments do, but not its characters. And yet I cannot see a way around it. This may not be a great play, but it is great theatre. And more than great theatre, it is important, essential theatre. Everyone has an opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, whether they verbalize it or not. This is an occasion to hear from every side without having to do the hard work yourself; and when you walk out of the theatre, you’ll be better informed than when you walked in.

That’s good enough for me.

Evan Ozer as Reuven and Jordan Lane Shappell as Asaf

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photos by Charles Osgood

The Ally
Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont Ave.
two hours thirty minutes with intermission
Thu–Sat at 7; Sun at 2
ends on May 2, 2026
for tickets, call 773.975.8150 or visit Theater Wit

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