Traditional Prejudices Separate ‘Friends and Enemies’

Would an exchange program at a university really allow students from different sides of a long and bitter war to be summer roommates? In Heidi Joyce’s “Friends and Enemies,” at the Bitter Truth Playhouse, the answer is a not-so-convincing yes.

An American Jew and scholastic underachiever from Cleveland, David (Andrew Harrison Leeds), arrives at George Washington University to find he’s rooming with an academically overachieving Palestinian, Mahmoud (Amir Salehi). At 13, they already have ideas, mostly springing from their parental prejudices.

Using masking tape, they draw a line, arguing over who gets the side with the bathroom and who has to use the facilities down the hall. Each lies to his parents about where his roommate is from.

Over the next five years, they attend this nebulous program, relegated to the same dorm room with each other. Slowly maturing, they begin rebelling against their parents’ authority. They become “best friends,” able to talk about things--girls, siblings, smoking--more freely because neither intrudes into the other’s home life.

As the director, Joyce elicits heartfelt performances. As a playwright, she eschews easy answers. But the play is a claustrophobic view, limited to these two boys in their room at a vaguely defined exchange program as if the fellowship of other students and the program itself were of little consequence.

Greater clarity of the program’s intent would ground this play in reality and better define the situation and its outcome.

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* “Friends and Enemies,” Bitter Truth Playhouse, 11050 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends July 29. $15. Running time: (818) 755-7900. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.