Salam Shalom ... A Tale of Passion

"I thought we were sharing the apartment," says Nabeel, a Palestinian grad student at Berkeley, to his Israeli roommate Yaron. Yaron's art and religious items dominate the space, and their apartment -- at least in the opening scenes of Salam Shalom -- works as a metaphor for a divided Israel. Yaron (Bradford Cooreman) gives Nabeel the corner of a small table to keep his kaffiyeh and other Palestinian things, but because this is a New Conservatory show, written by an out gay Arab-American called Saleem (who also plays Nabeel), the two men eventually fall in love. Supported by a Berkeley friend named Liza (Danielle Thys), but opposed by family members in Tel Aviv and Jordan, the men's relationship flowers in the Bay Area and withers in the Holy Land. Saleem has written what should be an enlightened protest of religious chauvinism. Unfortunately, he can't resist editorializing. Instead of writing a simple love story, which would be protest enough, he forces his characters to hold instant, preformed arguments about occupation and intifada, ripped (for the most part) from your average newspaper. Friends and family members also give stilted speeches from little booths on each wing of the stage, to dramatize the social forces at play. In director Mike Ward's production they're hidden by scrims until a yellow light comes on overhead -- making each actor look like a zoo animal under a heat lamp. It's a shame. Salam Shalom should be a subversive drama on the order of Kiss of the Spider Woman, and Saleem is one of the few people in a position to write it. His notion of the conflict is wonderfully liberated -- a challenge to both sides -- but even without peddling an obnoxious point of view his play is tendentious and strained.