For the world premiere of Honor Killing, Florida Studio Theatre has brought a universal cause to the stage via globe spanning technology. Through videos, projections, cell phone and skype transmissions, the audience can even expand to examine a mortal incident in Pakistan the like of which affects too many worldwide. Since mainly women suffer such ritual deaths, a feminist journalist takes on professional and personal risks to break a story that might help her get the custom buried. When New York Times reporter Allison, for a past indiscretion, is refused entrance to Pakistan during riots following the honor killing, she gets stuck in Dubai. Her boss dispenses reporter Ben, her former lover, to help her by going to Pakistan and electronically transmitting to her news, pictures, and especially interview arrangements with officials as well as her previous contacts. Now the play picks up a side-plot of romance between Allison and Ben. It languishes as she’s obsessed with the teenage gang rape of her sister Meg, which both Meg (now mature and happily pregnant) and Ben try to persuade Allison to get past. Allison refuses and also suspects Ben will compete for her honor killing story. So she lacks balance among her professional ambitions, own brand of feminism, obsession with the past, and personal inclinations. In the play’s present version, Rachel Moulton superbly handles Allison’s troubled persona and the complexities of the subject she’s reporting. But they lack satisfactory resolution. Michael Sweeney Hammond’s always likeable Ben, on the other hand, keeps a balance between his subjective feelings and his objective search for facts. Their combined problem is author Sarah Bierstock’s failure to qualify the story that the principles are working on over her play’s attention to their romance. A strength of both script and director Richard Hopkins’s casting and production choices is the telling and projection of the stories and views of the Pakistanis. Devon Ahmed is effective, if—like Allison—overly strident as the feminist from another culture, Mehreen. J. Paul Nicholas scores in four roles, including nastily as government official, loyal as Allison’s foremost contact, shocking as the husband of the murdered woman. Maria Couch is welcome as Melissa, Allison’s sister, who urges forgiving and forgetting. Does she have a husband, a partner, or some other support of her and her obvious desire to have a child? Why is William Langan’s Edward Evans, the Times editor, so duplicitous? Where is the photographer Ben supposedly brings with him to Pakistan? How does Al-jazeera get onstage? Are so many Skype projections needed? Why is only one print of Allison and Ben’s story shown, and then concentrated only on the headline and byline? Despite faults, most of the technical elements of Honor Killing are well worth attention. So is the titular subject. FST once again to its credit raises interest in an issue of world-wide importance and in an absorbing way.
