A theatergoer gets so used to shock, boundaries being transgressed, profanities, sex, naked bodies, and stentorian messages being delivered about the state of the world that a relatively quiet play about two people falling in love can seem daring and bold.
Duke & Roya (Lucille Lortel Theatre, through Aug. 23), starring a delightful cast featuring Insecure and Top Gun: Maverick star Jay Ellis, Stephanie Nur (Lioness), Noma Dumezweni (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child), and Dariush Kashani (The Band’s Visit), unfolds over roughly two hours, following the impediment-strewn path to true love between Duke (Ellis), a rap star, and Roya (Nur), an Afghan interpreter.
They meet because he goes to perform for American troops at Bagram Air Force Base in Kabul in 2017, where Roya and her father Sayeed (Kashani) work. (Ellis plays these concert moments, with original music by Ronvé O’Daniel, direct to the audience.) Like any good romantic comedy, the first thing apparent is the culture clash: He the brash rapper who’s an incorrigible, swaggering flirt; she the restrained, buttoned-up professional looking at him askance.
But it’s always in the eyes, and in Charles Randolph-Wright’s play we see immediately, despite Duke and Roya needling each other and coming from such different backgrounds and with such divergent ways of presenting themselves to the world, that they are cuckoo for each other. But, as any rainy-day Meg Ryan romantic comedy fan knows, getting together is never an easy thing.
Unlike a Meg Ryan comedy, Randolph-Wright writes some intriguing and all-too-plausible obstacles in Duke and Roya’s way. Nur skillfully ensures we see Roya’s determination, resilience, and playfulness borne of the challenges she has faced being female in a country and society where female education and professional independence is so frowned upon that she disguised herself as a boy to ensure she got a proper education—a disguise she still uses to help her get out at night. The plot also weaves in the Taliban, terror cells, bombs, and possible betrayal.
Roya and her father, who is supportive of her professional pursuits up to a point, have been vital at helping oversee Bagram, but find out how America really sees them after a bomb explosion casts a toxic pall of suspicion.
For Duke, there are an echoing set of disguises—principally that he isn’t the impoverished rap star from the wrong side of the tracks he masquerades as, but rather the very privileged son of Desiree Anderson-Duke (Dumezweni), a besuited, no-nonsense Senior Vice President at The World Bank.
Desiree calls her son out for all his nonsense—indeed any nonsense she happens to come across—with Dumezweni giving a standout performance, lobbing every bucket of cold water of common sense you could wish over her son and Sayeed. She also helps serve up the play’s most shockingly intimate moment.
As much as the play, directed by Warren Adams, is about Duke and Roya’s romance, it is about cultural identities and pride, and young people growing up and making a break with their pasts. Sayeed wants Roya to be safe so badly he doesn’t listen to what she wants, and Duke’s desire to help also comes with its own savior-tinged myopia. The play’s one bizarre sour note involves the fate of one of its elders, which may be all too real, but (for me) they deserved their own, much happier ending.
Fair warning: Duke & Roya is slow. Transitions between scenes feel labored. But its design (Wilson Chin), lighting (Amina Alexander), and projections (Caite Hevner) are spare and attractive, and the performances are so well-observed, the humor so subtle, and the gentle slow-burn of romance, familial conflict, and resolution so genuine that you find yourself watching it with exactly the same happily seduced expression as one of those rainy-day romantic comedies.
Now think about how those movies, at their most traditionally constructed, end. Think about what has been deferred all the way through to the very last moment and frame. Well, that’s exactly how Duke & Roya ends. In these relentlessly troubled times, its story and final, cheering visual feel a balm. As the stage went dark, our audience happily sighed “ahhh,” then cheered, as one.
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