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Layla's Sahra

nytheatre.com review by Stan Richardson
August 15, 2005

What keeps the delightful Layla’s Sahra from becoming "My Big Fat [Insert Ethnicity Here] Wedding" is a healthy self-awareness and lack of sentimentality. A sahra, the useful program note explains, is the Arabic version of the tamer “rehearsal dinner” most Anglo Americans enjoy on the night before a wedding. But at a sahra, no thoughts are put towards place settings or even cost: it is a raucous party where one gorges, dances, and, in the groom’s case, gets a haircut. This latter ceremony is the focal event of Lena Rizkallah’s play-skit currently in performances at the Linhart Theatre.Layla learns that her husband-to-be must participate in said ceremony—sitting in a chair in the midst of drummers, belly dancers, and plates of hummus—or else she will have to undergo an even more archaic tradition of having her privates waxed in front of all of her female relatives. She spends the next hour fretting over whether the fiance in question—one Paul DeLucio (who saw his own stylist that morning)—will be able to tolerate this particular culture clash.But Rizkallah has created some great opportunities for performers (not least of all for herself, playing Layla’s ultra-casual older sister Tata), and director Waleed F. Zuaiter (who also appears as Tata’s hairdresser husband, Samir) keeps the silliness sharply focused. Indeed, Rizkallah and Zuaiter stand out in this very funny ensemble, which also showcases the talents of Laith Nakhli and Ryan Shrime as a couple of “assimilated Arabs” who enjoy dancing in clubs, picking up women, and wearing the kind of jewelry commonly called “bling bling.” Tamar Verizian and Michael Keith Davis are a sweet couple in the less crazy roles of Laylah and Paul, while Lameece Isaaq and Najla Said nicely round out the terrific ensemble as, respectively, Laylah’s Mother whose worries include in which of the five freezers she should store the legs of lamb, and her grandmother, who is entirely unperturbed by the perpetual epiphany that she keeps eating Tic-Tacs rather than taking her memory medication.Go see this one.