Review: ‘The Ally,’ a hopeless show at Mixed Blood Theatre, also is one of the year’s most gripping

The most vexing and hopeless show onstage in the Twin Cities may also be one that is the most magnetic and stylish. And that’s not just because it takes place on a high-fashion catwalk that looks like it’s begging to be rocked by supermodels.

We can’t look away from Itamar Moses’ “The Ally” at Mixed Blood Theatre because the drama gives such impassioned vent to many of the strands of two of the most convulsive issues of the day — the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the police killing of Black men.

“Ally” feels like as if the playwright said, “Dammit. I’m just going to throw my whole fist into this live electric socket.”

The result leaves a lot to buzz about, and some seared ends, even if the Jewish, Arab and Black characters ultimately revert to their respective corners. They perhaps know a little more about each other but still are bound by the irreducible knots of tribe and lineage.

That’s not what playwright and professor Asaf Sternheim (Sasha Andreev) first believes when we meet him. This son of Israeli immigrants is a progressive atheist whose ex-girlfriend, Nakia (Nubia Monks), is Black while his college administrator wife, Gwen (Sun Mee Chomet), is Asian American.

The couple recently moved to a college town to follow her work, which is to lead the school’s expansion into a neighborhood currently occupied by marginalized groups. When a Black youngster is gunned down by police who think he may be a car thief, Asaf is asked by one of his students to sign a manifesto that links police brutality to Israeli settler colonialism. He agrees.

Over the course of the play, his relationship to his Jewish heritage goes from something that’s academic and intellectual to something more visceral. The arguments, nuanced and complicated as they are, act like a kind of acid that strips away veneers and leads him back to a profound connection to his heritage.

“Ally” sometimes feels illusive, like Moses is trying to staple Jell-O to a wall. Moses also cops out by setting the action in September 2023, weeks before the start of the latest round of Israeli-Palestinian bloodletting.

Director Mark Valdez, who is staging the two-act drama as his first main-stage show at Mixed Blood since becoming the artistic director, finds ways to give the countervailing ideas truth and passion.

The runway setup means that the audience is seated on either side of the action, watching the proceedings and one another. It’s like we’re jurors at a trial.

Valdez elicits stellar turns from his cast, who deliver their arguments with ample fire. A gifted musical theater performer, Andreev gives one of the best dramatic performances of his career. With the manifesto sticking out of his back pocket like some stump, he embodies Asaf’s ambivalences with empathetic nuance. He literally twitches this way and that as his bouncy ideas temporarily resolve themselves in his brows, screwy mouth and shaky limbs.

Monks glows as Nakia, a radiance that comes from the moral righteousness she brings to the activist lawyer (whose first name is just two letters removed from that of Twin Cities activist lawyer Nekima Levy Armstrong). Monks also imbues the rabbi, a second role, with a shimmering beneficence.

Chomet delivers another assured beautiful performance. Her Gwen is a kinder, gentler leader for the school’s displacement and development plans, and she makes us see the care she’s putting in as the face of the inevitable.

The rest of the cast is made up of relative newbies who’re still impressive. Ndunzi Kunsuga gives Asaf’s student Baron both solicitude and an air of grieving, even if Moses dismisses the character’s pain by having Baron tell his professor that he wasn’t that close to his deceased cousin.

David Michaeli enters like a locked-in hunter as a Jewish student opposed to Asaf’s positions and does not blink. Similarly, Tic Treitler is dialed in and lethally focused as Rachel, a casual-seeming student activist. And as another student activist, Ahmad Maher gives an emotional, heartfelt articulation of Palestinian wounds.

“Ally” is a sort of Israeli-Arab conflict companion piece at Mixed Blood.

In early October, the theater hosted a production of William Nour’s “Rosette,” a coming-of-age story of a Palestinian girl whose family was displaced in 1948. That small-focus play humanized a family seeking connection and solace in dark times.

Moses’ drama shows other facets of the story of tense humans striving for understanding, connection and, ultimately, acceptance. As staged and performed at Mixed Blood, it is relentless and gripping.

When: 7:30 p.m. Wed.-Sat., 2 p.m. Sun. Ends Nov. 10.

Where: Mixed Blood Theatre, 1501 S. 4th St., Mpls.

Tickets: Pay-as-you-can. 612-338-6131 or mixedblood.com.