The Talmud Bandied about at Lincoln Center in 'Disgraced'

The AP reported, "Comic actor shows dramatic chops in 'Disgraced'"

It’s an oft-used device in theater: The doomed dinner party, a gathering that starts out politely, with house gifts of wine or pastries and glasses clinking over civilized chatter, and ends up in horrific, angry chaos.

But when that party chatter touches on Islamic and Judaic tradition, the Quran and the Talmud, racial profiling and Sept. 11 and the Taliban and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Benjamin Netanyahu — along with the requisite alcohol intake — well, that’s a whole other level of chaos.

And it all unfolds with speed, energy and crackling wit in ‘‘Disgraced,’’ a terrific new play by the actor, novelist and playwright Ayad Akhtar.

Fans of Jon Stewart will have an extra motivation to head over to Lincoln Center’s Claire Tow Theater — the new home of the LCT3 series, which promotes rising playwrights. The lead character, a Pakistani-American corporate lawyer in New York, is played by Aasif Mandvi, the very funny correspondent on Stewart’s ‘‘The Daily Show.’’ Here Mandvi shows a dramatic depth and perceptiveness his TV fans likely never have seen before....