Theater: Laura Pels Theatre at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre / 111 West 46th Street, New York, NY, 10036
Synopsis:
If to live is to suffer, then Joseph Douaihy (Santino Fontana) is more alive than most. With unexplained chronic pain and the fate of his reeling family on his shoulders, Joseph's health, sanity, and insurance premium are on the line. In an age when modern medicine has a cure for just about everything, Sons of the Prophet is a refreshingly honest take on how we cope with wounds that just won't heal, and the funniest play about human suffering you're likely to see. Starring Joanna Gleason.
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October 20, 2011: To observe that a play about extreme suffering is also explosively funny might seem absurd. But one of the many soul-piercing truths in “Sons of the Prophet,” the absolutely wonderful new comedy-drama by Stephen Karam that opened on Thursday night at the Laura Pels Theater, is that life rarely obeys the rules of dramatic consistency, or, for that matter, fair play.
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October 21, 2011: All pain, no gain. For the ill-fated Lebanese-American family in Stephen Karam's darkly funny and deeply touching play, "Sons of the Prophet," that's the way it is. In this multigenerational portrait set in Pennsylvania, Karam, 31, makes good on the promise he showed four years ago in his teen dramedy "Speech and Debate."
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October 20, 2011: Stephen Karam ("Speech & Debate") writes from an off-kilter sensibility that sees something bitterly funny in life's tragedies. In his dark comedy, "Sons of the Prophet," scribe uses the biblical misfortunes of a Lebanese-American family to make light of death, disease, and physical infirmity -- and the compulsion of our cynical age to exploit all that misery for the commercial marketplace. Play is seriously entertaining, if a bit facile in wrapping up its themes.
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October 21, 2011: Add Stephen Karam to the short list of young playwrights who artfully chronicle the messy, funny, and sad turns that contemporary life takes. The author first drew attention with "Speech & Debate," produced as part of Roundabout Theatre Company's Underground series. He graduates to the company's Laura Pels space with "Sons of the Prophet," an offbeat comic look at a gay Lebanese-American man's struggles to overcome tragedy and loneliness. That makes the play, which premiered at Boston's Huntington Theatre Company, sound like a downer, but Karam offers such a deep, complex, and compassionate view of his protagonist's situation that it feels as if you're sharing in a valued friend's latest tribulations over a cup of coffee.
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October 21, 2011: Laughing at someone else's suffering may not be the most polite thing to do, but it's the most logical response to Stephen Karam's keenly observed and often hilarious new play, Sons of the Prophet, presented by Roundabout Theatre Company at the Laura Pels Theater under Peter DuBois' direction. However, the play's abundant humor is balanced by a deeply felt empathy for the play's central character, who is brought vividly to life by the extraordinary Santino Fontana.
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October 21, 2011: Laughing at someone else's suffering may not be the most polite thing to do, but it's the most logical response to Stephen Karam's keenly observed and often hilarious new play, Sons of the Prophet, presented by Roundabout Theatre Company at the Laura Pels Theater under Peter DuBois' direction. However, the play's abundant humor is balanced by a deeply felt empathy for the play's central character, who is brought vividly to life by the extraordinary Santino Fontana.
READ THE REVIEW
