‘Building the Wall’ review: Immigrant interrogation drama focuses on individuals

President Donald Trump has been impeached and “exiled to Palm Beach” — at least according to the two characters in Robert Schenkkan’s simple, absorbing and unapologetically disturbing interrogation drama “Building the Wall,” which takes place in the fall of 2019 and predicts that brutal, illegal-immigration and border security policies could lead the way to unimaginable disaster.

Schenkkan — whose prior work includes the Tony Award-winning “All the Way,” Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Kentucky Cycle” and Oscar-nominated screenplay of “Hacksaw Ridge” — wrote the 90-minute play in October in what his author’s note calls a “white-hot fury” as the “dispiriting” presidential campaign was nearing its end.

Following multiple regional productions, “Building the Wall” is receiving its New York premiere at Off-Broadway’s New World Stages in an intimate and tight staging directed by Ari Edelson.

Set in the enclosed, grim and gray meeting room of an El Paso prison (designed by Antje Ellermann), Gloria (Tamara Tunie, guarded and observant), an African-American historian, has been granted an interview with Rick (James Badge Dale, suspicious but loose and energized), the now incarcerated former warden of a private prison for those who are in this country illegally.

Their tense 90-minute conversation paints a dystopian portrait of the nation. Following a terrorist attack in Times Square (in which two square blocks were “irradiated”), martial law was declared and people who were in this country illegally were rounded up on an unprecedented scale, making it impossible to hold all of them.

Gloria wants to understand how Rick got involved in a brutal and shocking scheme (reminiscent of Nazi Germany) to permanently dispose of the detainees. Rick, who makes himself out to be a scapegoat and victim of corporate pressure, insists that he got involved unwillingly and without any racist motives, but Gloria has come prepared and she rebuts many of Rick’s claims of ignorance.

What distinguishes “Building the Wall” from some of the other political thrillers that are now in vogue (“The Handmaid’s Tale” on Hulu, “House of Cards” on Netflix, “1984” on Broadway) is its emphasis on the ordinary individual caught up in tumultuous times who either actively encourages or fails to take a stand against moral injustice.

In writing “Building the Wall” and getting it produced so quickly, Schenkkan has initiated a conversation about where the country is heading. Audience members can choose whether or not to let it continue.