My Rabbi begins with its two main characters, the young rabbi Jacob (Joel Bernbaum) and the recently turned devout Muslim Arya (Kayvon Kelly), each praying on their own. The solemn dignity of the prayers filled the Firehall Arts Centre with a sense of awe, but as the two men moved closer together, the chants blended into a single, mildly painful cacophony. The play, which was also written by Kelly and Bernbaum, presents religious dogmas as dangerous ideologies that stop us from seeing the basic humanity of other tribes, though the script does try to depict the appeal of spiritual quests. My Rabbi is a thoughtful meditation on the meaning of culture, family, and most of all friendship, but at the same time is scabrously funny. In other words, I’ve never seen a play before that contains both the holy Jewish prayer of the Shema, and musings on how to calculate the exact calorie count of semen.

The main action of My Rabbi takes place in an anonymous Canadian bar, and flashes back and forth between the two men as close school-age friends, and as slightly older, less intimate, and more pious acquaintances years later. Kelly and Bernbaum’s timing and chemistry gives the early scenes a riotous energy—both characters are irreverent horndogs, bugging each other about who got laid, how it happened, and whether dry humping counts as sex. Their respective cultural heritages are merely grounds for mockery, directed both at each other and themselves. They exuberantly greet each other with “Mazel Tov, bitch!” and “Burka burka Mohammed jihad,” and they crack (hilarious!) jokes about taboo topics like money, terrorism, and the tensions of Jewish-Muslim relations.

This same tension tears the older Jacob and Arya apart, as Rabbi Jacob deals with attacks on his Toronto synagogue and Arya deals with the fallout of his conversion to Islam. Jacob’s discovery of religion is not as well-dramatized as Arya’s, which includes a lovely lyrical passage about his Hajj to Mecca. The religious versions of these men can no longer communicate through their old jokes, and the invisible wall between them is painful to watch. I wasn’t totally convinced by the play’s overly dramatic ending—the mundane and universal story of friends drifting apart worked quite well on its own. And it would be nice, just once, to see a show about Muslim characters that doesn’t end in violence. That said, the characters’ ability to overcome their ignorance is inspiring and cathartic.

Bernbaum and Kelly play a variety of characters successfully, including each other’s skeptical fathers and a Canadian interrogation agent. Bernbaum has a gangly stage presence and a deadpan wit, while Kelly is a magnetic performer, who can spout off about seemingly anything—I particularly enjoyed his rant about why he’d rather be called Persian than Iranian (“Iranian” is associated with airline attacks, but “‘Persian’ reminds people of nice things, like kitty cats and rugs!”). It might be a betrayal of my Jewish brethren to admit that the Muslim had the funniest lines. But no matter your background or religious beliefs, My Rabbi is a moving and provocative experience.