Barbs and martyrs: The Black Eyed photo: Joan Marcus The Black Eyed By Betty Shamieh New York Theatre Workshop 79 East 4th Street 212-239-6200 Masked By Ilan Hatsor DR2 103 East 15th Street 212-239-6200 more theater most popular most commented Stitching: Mission Abort by Alexis Soloski Palace of the End: Leash Fatigue by Alexis Soloski The Flat Earth Glows Sightlines by McCann, Ruth Bash'd!: Rap, Now Even Gayer Sightlines by ROB KENDT Misha Shulman's Brunch at the Luthers Sightlines by GARRETT EISLER Trash Talking With Harvey Weinstein by Tony Ortega Coming and Then Licking It Up. Is This a Gay Thing? Savage Love by Dan Savage At Home With Competitive Swallowers Crazy Legs and Eater X by Andy Kropa Gene Simmons and the Whores He Admires La Dolce Musto by Michael Musto Columbia's Knotty Noose Problem by Graham Rayman The 'W.' Stands for 'War Criminal' (17) Nat Hentoff Scientology's Crushing Defeat (15) Tony Ortega Runnin' Scared: From Brooklyn, a Rap Campaign Against Tight Clothes (9) Runnin' Scared: Arcynta Ali Childs Runnin' Scared: The City Pitted Kids Against Artists in the East Village (6) Runnin' Scared: Chloé A. Hilliard Savage Love: My Boyfriend Almost Fathered a Lesbian Couple's Baby?!? (5) Savage Love: Dan Savage

In Shamieh's The Black Eyed, set in a grim afterlife, hell is other people. Also, it's low-ceilinged and pink. Four Palestinian women (the Biblical Delilah, a Crusades victim, and two contemporary gals) inhabit this rose-colored world. They discuss metaphysics, trade barbs, and debate entering "the room no one but martyrs have dared to go in." Though these women are specifically Palestinian and from distinct historical periods, Shamieh has an exasperating impulse toward the general. She wants to speak for all women, always, and in portentous poesy besides. The play's opening lines bode particularly ill. The character Aiesha intones, "Unanswered questions/Unquestioned answers/I do someone good dead/I do someone dead good." But no good can come of such wordplay.

Shamieh has clearly set herself difficult subjects, like Aiesha's query, "How do you survive in a violent world and not be violent?" Yet she hasn't thought through her arguments or her characters. The women speak in oracular pronouncements. Some receive an audience chuckle, like Delilah's claim that "Men can never tell the difference/between a beautiful woman/and a person dressed like one." But an assemblage of koans doesn't make a play. Director Sam Gold stocks the action with myriad light and sound cues, as though trying to distract from the play's hollow substance. It doesn't work. Nor can the attractive and able cast (especially Emily Swallow and Jeanine Serralles) veil the script's faults. One can't help wondering just how the play found its way onto New York Theater Workshop's stage. Perhaps as a belated apology for the company's failure to perform My Name Is Rachel Corrie.

Corrie's cancellation resulted in much ado, the sort of theatrical firestorm that the producers of Masked would kill to spark. Masked's posters prominently display the tagline, "An Israeli play about three Palestinian brothers." That blurb's far more shocking than the play itself. Hatsor's script, penned at the tender age of 18, concerns a trio of Palestinian brothers: a freedom fighter, a suspected collaborator, and a conflicted youngster. In the backroom of a butcher shop (hey, symbolism!), they argue about their allegiances and threaten one another with words, pistols, and cleavers. Like The Black Eyed, Masked sacrifices the particular for the all-purpose. It's unsurprising that the play has garnered dozens of productions across Israel and Europe—except for the character and place names and one jar of olives, the action could take place anywhere.

Perhaps it's a fault of the translation, but much of the dialogue sounds achingly stiff and programmatic. Twists and revelations occur, but any experienced theatrical nose can scent them minutes off. Under Ami Dayan's direction, the actors ceaselessly pace and prowl the stage, as though looking for a way out. They don't find one. "It's a struggle," claims the rebel Na'im. You said it, brother.