With an American behaving brashly at an overseas military base, getting locals into trouble and considering consequences only later, “Duke & Roya” feels like scarcely more than a retooling of “Madama Butterfly.” Like that old problematic chestnut, Charles Randolph-Wright’s new play is not without its pleasures, but lacking soaring melodrama, it’s hard to believe in its music.
Here, the visiting Westerner is Duke (Jay Ellis), a hip-hop star at the height of his fame. In a present-day press interview, he recalls his visit to Afghanistan in 2016, during the country’s U.S. occupation, to perform for troops at a large air base near Kabul. The play, which opened Tuesday at the Lucille Lortel Theater, then flashes back to his arrival and his immediate attraction to his Afghan interpreter, Roya (Stephanie Nur).
She’s a no-nonsense type, and he’s always on vacation mode. But Roya, who works for a women’s education organization, has done her research, and knows that the party boy, born to British and American diplomats, was once a bookish English major. His quoting Rumi and James Baldwin impresses her, and Duke appreciates how she challenges him.
It’s the standard romance of a down-to-earth civilian who grounds a starry hot shot, and Ellis and Nur lend it enjoyable chemistry.
Charm comes naturally to Ellis, a classic romantic lead in the HBO series “Insecure” who makes an amiable stage debut here. His swaggering Duke teases out the word “serendipitous” with the cascading, sweet-talking drawl of a Southern rapper, and he adeptly handles a few verses (penned by Ronvé O’Daniel). Nur finds appealing spaces for wit and agency in her more reserved, reactive role.
But does the play know there’s a war on?
Despite an opening scene of martial seriousness, Randolph-Wright treats Afghanistan like a Harlequin romance playground. When the two sneak out of the base for Duke to buy a piece of lapis lazuli, they’re thrown into unsurprising peril. Danger! Excitement! Two worlds collide!
The fallout from that episode, which closes the play’s first act, is tidied up surprisingly cleanly. But its spy-thriller foreshadowing had already introduced Duke’s mother, Desiree (the always excellent Noma Dumezweni), through a military interrogation, so now the play must figure out what to do with her. An implausible dalliance with Roya’s father (Dariush Kashani) is what it settles on.
Those jarring tonal shifts are mirrored in Warren Adams’s direction, which divvies up the action with scene-setting titles projected by Caite Hevner. These range from the unnecessary (“Canada, 2025”) to the slipshod (“The next morning,” when there had been no previous time marker). Desiree’s questioning, which takes place at some unspecified time and has no real impact on the story, might have benefited from some clarity.
Wilson Chin’s set — a bare stage flanked by imposing concrete columns, a back wall of concert lights and a grid of heavy-duty fans above — fares better in representing the two realms, and is lit in noirish shadows by Amina Alexander.
Staging a story about U.S. involvement in this region brings its own calamitous set of baggage, but the play doesn’t unpack any of it and only gestures toward foreign policy; it has equally little to say about its main characters.
When Duke briefly remarks on the dangers of being Black in America, there’s a flicker of deeper connection with Roya; in their way, each is a subject of modern imperialism. Roya’s life, spent entirely between the U.S.-controlled base and what she deems its rapidly Westernizing surroundings, is clear and living proof of this.
But just as Randolph-Wright approaches salient critique, a gear shift in plot or conversation restricts “Duke & Roya” to its rom-com genre. Ickily, the play winds up leaning harder (and glibly) against Afghanistan’s instability and its record on women’s rights than on America’s intervention in the region and its own injustices at home.
That incuriosity extends into an odd costuming choice. Snowber Sabrina Spanta’s designs are otherwise serviceable (or fabulous, for the regal Desiree), but early on, Duke comments on Roya’s eschewing a hijab as a way of complimenting her rebelliousness. She wears a head scarf, though — not as concealing a garment — but if there is a deeper nuance here, it is not one the play cares to explore.
The charismatic rapper follows this line with bumbling flattery, and she laughs it off. It’s a solid comic beat, but like the play, it’s not enough to fall for, or to bridge a cultural divide.
Duke & Roya
Through Aug. 23 at the Lucille Lortel Theater, Manhattan; dukeandroya.com. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes.
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