Watching this cast work is a gift. It's a modest story, and belongs in a smaller theater, but it's well-structured and well- directed, so as long as tickets are cheap (as they are now) it's easy to recommend.
That said, there are problems. Lane and Burstein are much too close in age to be playing father and son, and Lane doesn't match the other actors' yiddishkeit delivery (the father's experience of antisemitism is a plot point).
More significantly, playwright Sharr White sometimes gets the psychology wrong: Hostile words and deeds are not a natural part of negotiating intimacy, their origin is *fear* of intimacy, and are meant to undermine it. (One might attribute this misunderstanding to the character rather than the author, but in context it seemed we were meant to take it at face value.)
Still, it's sincerely if intermittently touching, and often funny - Lane can find a laugh where others would never even think to look. |
