Review: Compelling PROMISED LAND from Mosaic

It might be inviting this jammed political year to escape all the televised debates, town halls and election coverage and simply take in a play. But it's more rewarding when that play presents, better than anything from a political podium, the very issue that keeps coming up this year and an audience is left enlightened, informed and moved by its implications.

The Promised Land is the latest in the already rich Voices from a Changing Middle East Festival from the ever-ambitious Mosaic Theater Company, and precisely the kind of work that got the festival cancelled at the Jewish Community Center and Ari Roth, the former artistic director at Theatre J there, fired.

That the tide of immigrants are Sudanese, who can walk from their war-torn country and across the treacherous desert to the reluctant host country is Israel, doesn't mask the parallels of Syrians in Europe or those anxious to build walls between the U.S. and Mexico. But because it is Israel, and the play, co written by Shachar Pinkas and Shay Pitovsky (who adapted and directed the striking I Shall Not Hate which also played the festival) was first presented Habimah Theater in Tel Aviv, it may be seen as especially critical of a country founded by refugees and was one of the first signatories of the United Nations Convention of Refugees in 1951.

But how different is the reaction of people there than so many countries, including our own, to refugees, immigrants and outsiders?

Staged in a different site than the Mosaic's home at Atlas Performing Arts Center on H Street, the bare rehearsal hall at Woolly Mammoth serves as appropriately stark setting with its chain link fence backdrop by set designer Andrew Cissna, who is also responsible for the shock of fluorescent lighting that begins the piece. When actors come forward to spout facts and headlines about the humanitarian crisis in Eastern Africa and the response in Israel, it seems like it's going to be a pretty harsh and blunt presentation.

What would be far more effective is a theatrical representation, a collection of indelible scenes that connect the way theater can - not a resuscitation of facts.

Which is exactly what happens. (Director Michael Bloom added the headlines and statistics at the outset to give context to what was to happen - something the original Israeli audience, living the issue every day, didn't need).

Then the talented seven-member cast sets up its brief scenes of heartbreak and loss, suffering and long walks, of the unhumane bureaucracy and long jail times, of separated families and yearnings for home. Standouts among the half dozen include Kathryn Tkel as a youngster who still has hope despite the many moves she has to make, Awa Sal Secka as a sorrowful mother, Gary-Kayi Fletcher as a man caught in the new country's justice system, and Brayden Simpson as a young man who loses a friend. Audrey Bertaux may be the most flexible of all, going from a mother, to a bureaucrat and a couple of stops in between. Felipe Cabezas and Aaron Bliden have the thankless jobs of representing the most brutal and racist characters, but are convincing in doing so.

All of the stories are enhanced by very effective music and sound design by Eric Shimelonis.

At the end Bloom places another addendum - what's happened since (including a completion of a wall). But even more movingly, the immigrant stories in each of the actual actors' lives are told, reminding us of the immigrant stories in most of our pasts as well.

In just over an hour, The Promised Land succeeds in delivering a compelling and more thoughtful portrait of one of the bigger problems facing the world - the biggest refugee crisis since World War II - more succinctly and powerfully than hours of more political debate.

Running time: Seventy minutes.

THE PROMISED LAND continues through Feb. 28 at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, 641 D St. NW, Washington, D.C. Call 202-393-3939 or go to mosaictheatre.org

Photo: Kathryn Tkel and Awa Sal Secka in "The Promised Land." Photo by Stan Barouh.

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