“You have been watching too many movies!” the officer we know only as “The Colonel” snaps at Charles Kempler. He’s right. We’ve watched the same movies. We know that a man may be courteous, cultured, soft-spoken…and still be a villain. And that a hero may be impatient, ill-mannered and steadfast in his beliefs to the point of bigotry. Indeed, the latter’s very intolerance proclaims him immune to intimidation through strength or sophistry.
And besides, this is the (ominous music) Middle East. The Colonel is Islamic, an Arab, the chief of police in Fez, and Kempler is a tourist, an architect, an American citizen…he’s even Jewish! So when we hear that Kempler’s wife has been jailed for drunkenness, disorderly conduct, and soliciting soldiers, we are as certain as he that the charges are false and we applaud his protests. But as his indignation escalates, we start to wonder if he is not being a bit…well, unreasonable. He rants, he bellows, he threatens. He vilifies the Colonel and all his countrymen (“Your stench permeates your armies!”). When the irate husband’s own physician reports that Mrs. Kempler has venereal disease, he accuses the prison doctors of infecting her. Our suspicions grow when he later displays this same attitude toward his undeniably attractive consort, who reveals that her ordeal fell far short of the nightmare he had envisioned.
Is Kempler one of those husbands who imagines every man a rival for his wife’s affections? Does his spouse deliberately invite peril so that he may reaffirm her virtue by rescuing her? Is the source of his uneasiness her Ottoman ancestors, her emancipated demeanor, or her high-powered job in International Banking? Do their overseas travels remind Kempler of his own alienation from the gentile society to which he aspires? Or is his self-esteem so diminished that he can only assure himself of his good intentions by projecting bad ones on everyone else?
The author is not telling, nor is director Jeff Ginsberg. The actors in this Trap Door Production…Bill Bannon as the blustering Kempler, Rom Barkhordar as the imperturbable Colonel, and Susy Ibrahim as the mysterious Mme. Kempler…likewise play close to the vest, forcing us to question our own pre-conceived notions of who these people are and what they represent.
The experience might be unsettling to playgoers complacent in their naive righteousness, but necessary if we are to avoid falling prey to the very xenophobia we would condemn in others.