The second night of ReOrient (on Fridays and Sundays) fares better: A solid, witty play by Israel Horovitz called Security shows a pair of thickheaded security guards in a New York airport whose job it is to interview an Iranian woman and her son. The woman speaks no English -- only Farsi, or, as one guard puts it, "Iranian" -- and the son speaks just enough English to get him into trouble. The situation, as they say, escalates. Michael Wayne Rice and Lawrence Radecker both do strong and sympathetic work as the coarse-tongued guards, and Torange Yeghiazarian is a pitch-perfect Iranian mother. Jim Brightwolf's skit The Terrorists amounts to an editorial-page cartoon, not especially well played, about the source of weapons on both sides of a certain Middle Eastern conflict; Fateh Samih Azzam's Baggage is well-played but drags on too long. Ali Dadgar gives a nuanced, affectionate performance as a harried Palestinian traveler lugging six bags through a western airport, but his long personal stories about the bags' provenance need editing. Karima's City is much stronger: It's an hour-long centerpiece play, based on a story by the Egyptian novelist Salwa Bakr, about a spirited Muslim woman named Karima who lands in an asylum for overflowing her ordained social role. (She neglects, for example, to wear a bra to work.) Her scandals are funny, though her love for trees comes off as a bit sappy; in general, the piece could use a good edit. But the lead performance (by Bernadette Quattrone) and the support work (by Dadgar, among others) are terrific.
