{"id":251180,"date":"2017-01-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-01-27T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/bad-jews-good\/"},"modified":"2017-01-27T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-01-27T08:00:00","slug":"bad-jews-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/bad-jews-good\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Bad Jews\u2019 good"},"content":{"rendered":"

Por Charlene Baldridge<\/p>\n

Joshua Harmon\u2019s \u201cBad Jews,\u201d seen in its opening performance Jan. 21 at Cygnet Theatre, is set in a present day studio apartment on New York\u2019s Upper West Side.<\/p>\n

Billed as 90 minutes in length, it is played without interval, causing one to opine that if there were an interval, some in the audience might flee because the play\u2019s invective, however hilarious, is sometimes challenging, especially to those who spend a lot of time and energy avoiding confrontation.<\/p>\n

\"\u2018Bad
(l to r) Josh Odsess-Rubin, Katie Sapper and Danielle Frimer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\u2018Bad
Tom Zohar and Danielle Frimer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jonah Haber (played by Tom Zohar with inner writhing, outer stillness) is one of those. To avoid listening to his harridan, \u201cgood Jew\u201d cousin Daphna Feygenbaum (Danielle Frimer), with whom he\u2019s been stuck for two days in his parents\u2019 spare apartment, he plays video games. Their grandfather\u2019s funeral has already occurred, and Daphna is castigating Jonah\u2019s brother Liam (John Odess-Rubin) for missing it, even though he\u2019s soon to arrive to sit a weeklong shiva. It seems Liam dropped his cellphone off a ski lift and was thus incommunicado at the time of Poppy\u2019s passing.<\/p>\n

When Liam arrives with his endearing, slightly ditsy, shiksa girlfriend, Melody (Katie Sapper), Daphna has further fuel for her denouncement of his \u201cbad Jew\u201d lifestyle, in which he isn\u2019t kosher or even observant, dates women out of his class and religion, and dares to go for his Ph.D. in contemporary Japanese culture.<\/p>\n

\"\u2018Bad
(l to r) Danielle Frimer, Katie Sapper, Josh Odsess-Rubin and Tom Zohar (Photos by Daren Scott)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Daphna, on the other hand, is ardently religious and headed for rabbinical studies. In her mind this entitles her to inherit their grandfather\u2019s most precious relic, a golden chai necklace, symbol of the living God and the courageous, faithful life. During his Holocaust imprisonment, Poppy concealed the pendant under his tongue, and when liberated he gave it to the woman who made him want to live again even though he had lost his entire family. She became Liam and Jonah\u2019s grandmother.<\/p>\n

As they argue passionately over possession of the chai (pronounced \u201dhi\u201d), which Liam already has and intends to give to Melody, Liam and his cousin, uber Jew Daphna, explore what it means to be a Jew. She cuts no slack.<\/p>\n

\"\u2018BadThe play\u2019s comic relief is provided by Jonah and by Melody, a former music student who demonstrates why she went into another field with an indescribable, deliciously bad rendition of \u201cSummertime\u201d from \u201cPorgy and Bess.\u201d Sapper, a musical theater veteran and a fine comic, most admirably catches her character\u2019s good-natured intent.<\/p>\n

All roles are played splendidly under the direction of Cygnet Associate Artistic Director Rob Lutfy, who is proving an invaluable asset to this fine theater company headed by Sean Murray and Bill Schmidt. Lutfy\u2019s design team comprises sound designer Kevin Anthenill, scenic designer Sean Fanning, costume designer Danita Lee, and lighting designer R. Craig Wolf.<\/p>\n

\u2014Charlene Baldridge has been writing about the arts since 1979. Follow her blog at charlenecriticism.blogspot.com<\/a> o llegar a ella en <\/em>charb81@gmail.com<\/em><\/a>. <\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Por Charlene Baldridge<\/p>","protected":false},"author":731,"featured_media":251181,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"\u2018Bad Jews\u2019 good","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11549,11547,11551,11550,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-251180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-features","category-news","category-top-stories","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/731"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}