Our grandmothers told that we shouldn’t discuss politics or religion in polite society. Apparently that was not a lesson learned by the accomplished characters in a Pulitzer Prize-winning play receiving wide exposure this year in Australia. Disgraced won the Pulitzer in 2013. Two successful couples of differing origins are dining in a smart New York apartment. The host couple is Amir, a high achieving lawyer who is a non-practising Muslim of Pakistani origin and his wife Emily, a Caucasian artist given to using Islamic imagery in her work. Their guests are Jory, a black American woman who is a senior lawyer in Amir’s firm and her boyfriend Isaac, a Jewish art curator.

If all that doesn’t sound a little contrived, then add a fifth character, Amir’s nephew, Abe, a young Pakistani-American who is being drawn to radicalism. The sophisticated surface of the two couples relationships is strained when they discuss a case which Amir has taken on at his wife’s insistence because it involves young Abe. Identity and its ties to racial origins and religions contrasts the characters’ self imagery with who they really are.

The STC is presenting Disgraced from April 21 with that production touring to Parramatta and Canberra. The MTC is opening a production on August 19 and the QTC on October 14. The playwright, Ayad Akhtar doesn’t waste time; Disgraced races along for just 90 minutes with no interval.