nothin Bad Jews, Good Theater? | New Haven Independent

Bad Jews, Good Theater?

LWT

Tickets for Bad Jews, which opens at Long Wharf Theater on Feb. 18, have nearly sold out — while sparking five outraged calls, and counting, of protest.

The complaint? That Long Wharf, the Jewish Foundation of Greater New Haven, and the Jewish Federation of New Haven have the chutzpah to present and support a play that might be bad” for the Jews.

That’s the box score so far for the Joshua Harmon play about three 20-something members of a Jewish family, plus one non-Jewish girlfriend, crammed together in a New York apartment after their grandfather’s funeral.

To some, the play might be a satirical hoot and basis for a community conversation about Jewish self-identity. To others, it might be an embarrassing airing of dirty laundry akin to the cultural dust-up around Philip Roth’s 1969 novel Portnoy’s Complaint.

The show runs until Mar. 22.

News of the protest emerged Monday night at the Mitchell Branch Library, where 20 people braved the cold to participate in a wide-ranging discussion of When Faith Divides a Family,” led by New York Times Beliefs columnist and Westvillian Mark Oppenheimer.

The discussion followed on a staged reading of a scene from the play, deftly performed by Christy Escobar and Keilly McQuail, who are part of the play’s ensemble.

In Bad Jews, McQuail plays Daphna Feygenbaum, obsessed with her own Jewish identity and her sense of utter entitlement to a piece of heirloom jewelry that carries, to her mind, the deep aura of her family’s group history and suffering. Escobar’s character, Melody, is the girlfriend of Daphna’s cousin, Liam, a highly assimilated Jew getting a PhD in Japanese cultural studies. He has other very strong ideas about what to do with the heirloom — like giving it to his profoundly non-Jewish, very whitebread bride-to-be.

Oppenheimer, along with Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven CEO Sydney Perry, weighed in on the play as a launching pad for a discussion about what makes Jews bad” or good” and whose business it is anyway.

Perry, whose organization is sponsoring a reception for the play at Long Wharf on opening night, said she has received at least five phone calls of protest thus far — even as the show is selling out. She reported that Long Wharf’s artistic director, Gordon Edelstein, joked that he’d like to put something akin to the words bad Jews” in the titles of all the plays he puts on.

Oppenheimer (pictured) pointed out that it’s highly likely that unless Perry’s callers had seen the play in New York — where it was developed and received raves at the Roundabout Theater — they are likely protesting based solely on the play’s title. He doubted they had seen or read the play, which he found delightful, cover to cover.

Perry said delightful” is not the term she would have chosen to describe the play, which contains a foul-mouthed tirade by Daphna on what an assimilated, patently self-hating Jewish zero her cousin has become. Oppenheimer characterized Daphna as a connoisseur of cruelty.”

Daphna’s cousin Liam’s tirades are fewer but rocket-powered as well, beginning with what a frizzy, filthy, brown, dandruff-dropping mess Daphna’s hair is. On the heels of that he rails that she is also utterly Israel and Holocaust-obsessed, closed-minded, manipulating, and vituperative. And then, without giving the play away, he really lets her have it.

For Liam, the only healing for Daphna will derive from the kind of true love he has with Melody — or, failing that, just getting laid.

Melody, meanwhile, absorbs these flood waters like a humanistic why-can’t‑people-just-be-nice Christian sponge. The fourth character in the play, Liam’s younger brother Jonah, sits there playing video games, saying time and again that he doesn’t want to be in the middle of his cousins’ fight. Yet Jonah has a special raw and riveting secret to reveal.

There may be a time and a place, said Oppenheimer, when peoples’ fears of stoking prejudice through such self-lacerating, revealing, and possibly stereotype-encouraging portraits of Jews is indeed a serious issue.

Maybe France today, but unlikely in Greater New Haven,” he said. The best medicine for any community’s concerns about looking good” is simply to tell the truth, he averred.

Perry (pictured) surmised that her callers of protest were people who themselves might feel a little guilty as Jews for not going to synagogue or following even the major requirements of the 613 mandated commandments, like keeping the Sabbath and the dietary laws.

Her conclusion: You don’t have to eat kosher or go to synagogue, but you have to be proud, and I’m going to be there on opening night.”

No shrimp or lobster will be served, Perry noted: We’re good Jews.”

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