KRCB-FM: Second Row Center

Blistering drama takes the stage at Santa Rosa’s Left Edge Theatre with the North Bay premiere of Ayad Akhtar’s 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Disgraced. Akhtar has taken the “friends drink to excess and soon truths are revealed” theatrical trope (along the lines of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) and dragged it into the 21st century. Amir Kapoor (an intense Jared N. Wright) is a mergers and acquisitions attorney who’s changed his name and family history and abandoned his Muslim faith in his attempt to climb the corporate ladder. His wife Emily (Ilana Niernberger in the play’s most difficult role) is an artist whose work is heavily influenced by Islamic culture. She’s anxious to have her work displayed by her friend Isaac, played by Mike Schaeffer in an alternately amusing and disturbing performance. He’s a museum curator and the husband of Jory (played by an effective Jazmine Pierce), who’s a fellow ladder-climbing attorney at Amir’s firm. All seems to be on track until Amir appears at a court heari