Past Reviews

Regional Reviews: Albuquerque/Santa Fe


Regional Reviews

Self-hatred and self-discovery
on the Albuquerque stage

Mother Road


Isaac Christie and Kate Costello
What happens to a people when self-hatred reaches such a pitch that they lose touch with who they are? That is the question that drives the family comedy Last Night of Ballyhoo, in a polished and professional Mother Road production at the Tricklock Performance Laboratory in downtown Albuquerque.

The tone is set from the opening scene as a family of highly assimilated, upperclass German Jews discusses whether to leave a star on top of their Christmas tree, prominently displayed in the home's front window. Although a character complains, "Jewish Christmas trees don't have stars," the star stays.

The five members of this Atlanta family have no Jewish traditions, and the two younger women don't even recognize the names of Jewish festivals. In assimilation, the family found financial security but a deeper imbalance. "We're Jews, but have no place in society," complains the flighty college dropout Lala Levy (Bridget S. Dunne). Later she complains to her brighter and more successful cousin, "You've always gotten all the attention, even from God. He didn't give you any Jewish features, and look at me."

The play opens on "the most important day in the history of Atlanta," in December 1939, when the movie Gone with the Wind premieres. Incidentally—and for these characters it seems almost incidental—Hitler has just conquered Poland, launching World War II.

Two developments propel the action. One is when a different kind of Jew shows up. Joe Farkas (Isaac Christie) is an ambitious young New Yorker whose family hails from Eastern Europe. "The other kind of Jew," his looks, gestures and accent are those of an immigrant urban Jew, unlike the sugary southern accents, stylized emotions, and languid lives of the assimilated German Jews around him. In New York, Farkas says, "We're just Jews. We don't think about it."

The other development is Ballyhoo, a fancy black tie ball at a Jewish country club for wealthy, conservative assimilated Jews. Suddenly, all the characters are forced to confront their own form of prejudice, Jew versus Jew. This in turn leads to a moment at the end—the only moment in the entire play that I found unconvincing—when they collectively rediscover their Jewish roots.

The cast and director Steve Barberio (who doubles as president of the Mother Road board) have done an outstanding job of bringing this award-winning 1986 play alive on the contemporary Albuquerque stage. It takes little imagination to substitute Hispanic for Jewish and visualize the internal challenges of native New Mexicans choosing how to assimilate or to define themselves in the face of Anglo dominance and more recent Mexican immigration.

Catherine Haun and Bridget Kelly as the two mothers convincingly confront life through the double veils of southern and Jewish denial. Kate Costello and Dunne as the daughters are about as opposite as two lifelong friends can be, smoothly articulating their love-hate relationship. Christie's New Yorker Farkas is utterly convincing. Matthew Van Wettering is winningly absurd in the role of Peachy Weil, Lala Levy's suitor. Finally William R. Stafford faultlessly enlivens the character of the pater familias, Adolph Freitag, a hard businessman with a predictable touch of softness.

The fine cast, however, does not do itself a favor at the play's conclusion. Gathered together in a tightly knit group, they freeze for a moment as the lights come up. The audience is not sure if the play is over. Then, just as tentative applause begins, the actors walk off stage. They never take a bow. They deserve better.

I want to add an unusual personal note to this review. I was born in Atlanta, eight moths after this play takes place, into a prosperous highly assimilated Jewish family. My father, like Adolph Freitag, was a successful businessman. My mother, who was about the same age as Lala Levy and sometimes seemed just as scattered, was named Lila. The places mentioned in the play—Rich's Department Store, Georgia Tech, Peachtree Street, Pacey's Ferry Road, Buckhead—were all defining sites in my own childhood. We had a Christmas tree and belonged to a country club. Although Jewishness was never an issue in my home, I found the characters, the accents, and the events redolent of my own childhood.

My childhood was not a happy time for me, in part due to my inability to mesh with the Southern society around me. Watching this play, I felt that some of the scenes were so close to the bone that I could not separate my pleasure in the performance from my pain at the memories.

The Last Night of Ballyhoo continues Thursday-Saturday at 8 pm with its last performance Sunday December 28, 2014, at 2 pm, at Tricklock Performance Laboratory, 110 Gold St. SW in Albuquerque. For tickets and information visit motherroad.org. Free parking is available at the garage at 241 Second St., just around the corner from the theater.

--Wally Gordon