 Jonah ( Kenny Toll) Liam (Max Resenak) and Melody (Riley Krull).jpg "14113234626-Daphna (Rebecca Benhayon) Jonah ( Kenny Toll) Liam (Max Resenak) and Melody (Riley Krull).jpg")
“Bad Jews” act out at Magic Theatre
Religious intensity is not an emotion I’ve ever felt or am likely to feel, and it makes me uncomfortable when I run across it in other people. It’s certainly no enhancement to American politics, and its consequences in the Middle East are just plain scary. Still, it’s a legitimate, even fertile, subject for art. I’m not saying that Joshua Harmon’s Bad Jews, now at Magic Theatre as the opener of its 48th season, is a work of art, but it seethes with religious intensity.
Pride in being Jewish is the fuel that sets it afire.
The play’s heated encounters take place in an Upper West Side studio apartment that’s much too small for the emotions that build in it. Its denizens are all in their early twenties, and their set-to starts calmly enough. Jonah Haber and his cousin, Daphna Feigenbaum, have arrived in New York for their grandfather Poppy’s funeral. They’re meant to share the studio with Jonah’s older brother, Liam, who hasn’t shown yet. Laconic and bland, Jonah is an avoider, which may make him wiser than his passivity suggests, because, boy, is there something to avoid! He knows it the moment the glint-eyed Daphna tries to strong-arm him into taking her side in a campaign to get her hands on Poppy’s gold Chai amulet.
A Chai usually goes to a male, but she’s proudly the most “Jewish” of the candidates–she’s heading to Israel to immerse herself deeper in her heritage and, maybe, to marry an Israeli guy–so she just knows the thing should go to her instead of to her cousin Liam. But when Liam shows up, with his blonde shiksa girl friend, Melody, in tow, Daphna faces an uphill fight. It turns out he’s already got the Chai and has plans for it as well–plans involving Melody. Self-righteous and capable of giving offense without breaking a sweat, Daphna goes for the jugular, but Liam is a tough cookie (matzo?), and the battle between the two of them turns into a bitter war.
Though this sounds grim, if you’re watching the antics from behind the safety of the “fourth wall,” you may burst out laughing.
Director Ryan Guzzo Purcell orchestrates the mayhem with a fine sense of balance and irony, aided by a talented support team that includes the unfailingly admirable Erik Flatmo (set), and by Antonia Gunnarson (costumes), Ray Oppenheimer (lighting) and Sara Huddleston (sound). Attention also must be paid to fight director Dave Maier.
Among the quartet of actors, Rebecca Benhayon makes a scarily convincing Daphna; Max Rosenak rants hilariously as Liam; as Melody, Riley Krull makes WASPish sweetness exquisitely funny; and Kenny Toll negotiates the thankless role of hang-back Jonah, whose job is to keep saying, “I don’t want to be involved.”
I’m bound to report that much of the opening night audience laughed a lot at Bad Jews, because I’m also bound to report that I didn’t laugh nearly as much. I get the comedy of egomania and the theme of the importance, or unimportance, of cultural heritage, but the noisy polemics wore me out. The play is awfully one-note, and at the end hardly anyone had changed. The air remained thick with rancor, and Daphna’s final statement about the Chai (revealing it would be a spoiler) was, for me, a dismaying cheat. What was all the fighting about?
There is, however, one fine and surprising final note: Jonah’s revelation (I can’t give that away either) demonstrating that he, the quiet one, may be the best Jew of all.
Bad Jews plays at Fort Mason until October 5th, followed in Magic Theatre’s 2014-15 season by Naomi Wallace’s And I and Silence, directed by Loretta Greco. for tickets/information call 415-441-8822 or visit www.magictheatre.org.
–ROBERT HALL