By Michael H. Margolin
The Jewish Ensemble Theatre opened its 2010-11 season Saturday night with a big joke – well, actually a series of them, in James Sherman's "The God of Isaac."
Sherman, best known for his play, "Beau Jest", has a nice ear for dialogue and a store of popular Jewish humor that goes back to Lenny Bruce, Shelly Berman and the famous Borscht Belt resorts in the Catskills, in upper New York state where many uber-talents of Jewish humordom had their start in the last century.
But wait, I am ahead of myself: The play takes place around 1977 and ends in 1982, in and around Chicago and suburban Skokie, and in two acts. The central character, Isaac Adams, is a small "j" jew who sets off on a quest to become a big "J" Jew – or at least one who knows what it means to be Jewish, not just born to a Jewish mother.
As Isaac, Michael Brian Ogden, who is in nearly every scene, plays the addled, confused, angry, young man – I make him to be about 30 – pitch perfectly. Just watching him transition from one scene to another, in and out of the narrator role and into his character is a pleasure I point out because it looks so seamless one might not notice.
This is how the play works: He tells us that he is playing a character and mentions that his mother is in the audience. Indeed, Henrietta Hermelin-Weinberg, who plays his mother, is actually seated in the audience and has a small, circular light which embraces her for her dialogue interchanges. Ah, would that I be that light, for Henrietta is still a slim and beautiful woman that I fell in love with from afar many years ago at Wayne State University Theatre. She plays Mrs. Adams with relish – or should that be dill pickle?
During the course of the play, each of the other actors – there are four – impersonate characters in the play and in vignettes from well known popular films which, when translated into Jewish-like versions of Isaac's search, can be extraordinarily funny. In one, early in Act I, the famous scene "I coulda been a contenda" from "On the Waterfront" is hilariously rendered as "I coulda been a mensch," with a swell impression of Marlon Brando channeling Billy Crystal.
Well, Isaac, you coulda been a mensch, for, as the play opens, and you introduce first the shiksa Shelley and the Jewish Chaya, you choose Shelley to marry. We all know that is a mistake, but it leads us to believe we are moving into Phillip Roth territory – the Jewish man who yearns for the gentile and suffers and bitches and moans for his choice, but still yearns for the sexual thrill of coupling outside the faith.
Instead, what we get is a bit of semi-famous history when an American Nazi decides he wants to march through heavily Jewish Skokie and the ACLU comes to his defense – to the shock of its many Jewish supporters. The community was up in arms (literally, in the play, in a vignette with a member of the Jewish Defense League who advocates active response, which means violence.)
So, while wrestling in the erotic embrace of Shelley the model, Isaac becomes involved with issues of Judaism, beginning when his new bride buys a bed for them and says she got a good price by "jewing them down." (My spell check suggests "jawing," so I assume that Apple does not acknowledge anti-Semitism.)
Act I, despite its serious theme, is loaded with laughs. Some of the jokes are old – well, it is 1977 – and others sound vaguely familiar. In fact, if you happen to see Woody Allen's early '70s "Play it Again, Sam" at 1515 Broadway, you might see strong resemblances in the use of Jewish humor and the struggle to achieve a singular goal.
As the rabbi that Isaac consults about his growing confusion and marital discord tells him when he complains that Moses did a helluva job but is not honored even by a holiday and was buried in an unmarked grave and never reached the promised land, the rabbi says, "Maybe it's the journey that matters."
Okay, fair enough: As we journey through Isaac's "Impossible Dream," we learn a lot about Jewish pop culture – when his wife brings home Oscar Meyer salami instead of kosher, the audience gasps and howls as, adding insult to injury, she pulls out the condiment she has chosen: mayonnaise – and we genuinely believe his quest. In Act II, however, the journey is resolved with platitudes from his mother, a little Jewish guilt and his last word, "Shalom." If that's the answer to being a Jew, I will stick with the journey. Still, if Act I is gold and if Act II is tarnished silver, they are both precious metals.
Of course, there is the splendid cast which puts the "Ensemble" in Jewish…Theatre. The four other actors, who play four or five roles apiece, are wonderful: the great Arthur Beer who infuses each character with real life; Kathryn Ruth Mayer who makes her greatest mark as the Jewish girl who learns something about being a woman; as the shiksa-model-wife, Dana Dancho has the thankless task of serving as a mouthpiece for objections to Isaac's search, but she manages to infuse the role with a sense of forgivable insensitivity.
Last, but not least, is Drew Parker who has been on hiatus for six years, according to the program. Well, whatever he has been doing it hasn't been wasted: In his several vignettes, including the Brando character, he brings great energy and etches the character indelibly on the audience in his brief moments. If theaters in southeast Michigan don't start casting with him in mind, there is no justice.
A word about Christopher Bremer, the director: He blocks well and leads his characters with sensitivity through the shtick and the serious, using the efficient set by Sarah Tanner, to maximum effect.
Mary Copenhagen's costumes are apt, it seems to me, for the period; Donald Fox's lighting scheme is good as far as it goes, which is up to the perimeter of the playing space where there are dead spots; and the director and he can fight it out over the mistake that Mrs. Adams is not lit every time she speaks. Either she is in or she's out, people.
REVIEW:
'The God of Isaac'
Jewish Ensemble Theatre at the Aaron DeRoy Theatre, 6600 West Maple Rd., West Bloomfield. Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday & Sunday through Oct. 31. $32-$41. 248-788-2900. http://www.jettheatre.org.
