Sons of the Prophet came to L.A. with a lot of hoopla propelling it: successful run at the Roundabout in New York, finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize. That made me attend the L.A. premiere with a keen sense of anticipation...only to be badly let down.
Stephen Karam’s play about a Pennsylvania Lebanese-American family going through tough times has some good moments but never quite jells. Instead of being caught up in its story, I found myself feeling more and more detached and indifferent as it unfolded.
Set in Eastern Pennsylvania in 2006-2007, Sons of the Prophet centers on two youthful brothers, Joseph (Adam Silver) and Charles (Braxton Molin), both of whom are gay and make irreverent jokes about it (“you dress like a lesbian”). Joseph, who has terrible health problems, works for a wacky publishing executive named Gloria (a very funny Tamara Zook). Charles is a layabout and a Christian fundamentalist. Their Maronite parents are dead: mother from cancer, father killed in a road accident which resulted from a prank. Vin (Mychal Thompson), a black kid who is the star of the local high-school football team, planted a stuffed decoy in the road; the father crashed his car while trying to avoid it.
The brothers sympathize with Vin and don’t think he should be put in jail. Their Uncle Bill (Jack Laufer) disagrees; he’s not only irascible and judgmental but a racist. He’d like to see the kid tried for murder. The last major character is Timothy (Erik Odom), a fledgling TV reporter who turns up to cover Vin’s hearing and to get the family’s side of things. He also willingly lets himself be seduced by Joe.
The playwright tried to mesh all of these disparate elements and make a compelling drama out of them. He fails in that regard for me, except when he deals with Joe’s mortality. An ex-track star, he contracts a series of debilitating diseases which will one day prove fatal. The way he faces up to suffering and death is both admirable and moving – until the subplots take over again and defused the power of those moments.
Another major distraction: almost all the actors speak their lines in a similar way, with much stuttering and overlapping lines. Director Michael Matthews should have paid more attention to these unfortunate and alienating vocal mannerisms.
