Posted at TimesofSanDiego.com on 10/28/16 RUN DATES:  10/20/16 – 11/13/16 VENUE:  San Diego Repertory Theatre If you relish theater that delivers a gut-punch, brace yourself for “Disgraced.” Not once, or even twice, does the audience audibly gasp. There are a number of shocking moments you won’t soon forget. You’ll also very likely leave the theater profoundly disturbed and unnerved. This two-couple dinner-party setup makes “God of Carnage” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” look like child’s play. The stakes are much higher here:  in sweeping strokes and pinpoint attacks, racial, cultural and religious groups are being exposed and undermined. Perhaps the structure of the piece, and its characters, are a bit symmetrical and contrived. In the two couples – all highly successful New Yorkers – there’s a white woman married to a Pakistani-American, and a Jewish man with an African American wife. Midway through the fennel salad, the conversation takes an inflammatory turn, from assimilation to race-baiting. Which group has been more oppressed? Which has been more frequently racially profiled? Which has had to tamp down more of their true nature or cultural indoctrination to be a functional, successful, accepted part of the American mainstream? Ayad Akhtar’s drama (his first … Continue reading “DISGRACED” at the San Diego Repertory Theatre