From Swedish playwright Jonas Hassen Khemiri comes a story about the effect of racial profiling on an individual and on a community. A bomb explodes in the city, and from then it’s hard for Amor (Osamah Sami; brilliant) to go about his day as if everything is normal. He gets in his own head and tries to imagine what’s going on in others’; all the while we wonder what everyone’s real motives are.
Director Nadja Kostich has crafted a tense atmosphere, amplified by Marg Howell’s pop-out building block walls – used as props and barriers – and a sublime audiovisual combination of muted, throbbing music, shadowy lighting and structured projections (the work of composer Darrin Verhagen, lighting designer Rachel Burke and video designer Michael Carmody). The supporting cast – Ray Chong Nee, Joana Pires and particularly Alice Ansara – excel, their characters playing off of Amor’s various anxieties.
Woven into this compelling crescendo that’ll have you holding your breath is a dissection of social stigma, paranoia, obsession and masculinity, unconscious bias and cultural identity. I Call My Brothers is a perfect choice for MTC’s Education Program, and also a worthwhile watch for anyone, not just students.
