Theatre Review: ‘The Who & the What’ Examines Faith and Family

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Charles Isherwood

Heidi Armbruster and Aasif Mandvi as a married couple in “Disgraced,” in 2012

NEW YORK---Matters of faith and family, gender and culture are stirred together into a fiery-flavored stew in “The Who & the What,” the probing new play by Ayad Akhtar that opened on Monday at the Claire Tow Theater at Lincoln Center. Like Mr. Akhtar’s “Disgraced,” which won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize and will be seen on Broadway this fall, this new work considers the itchy frictions that emerge when religious belief and contemporary life rub up against each other, as they do for the family at the center of the play, a Pakistani immigrant and his two grown daughters. [link]