Wendy Wasserstein’s “The Sisters Rosensweig” may be about Jewish women, but it holds especially poignant appeal to any woman who has a sister, and perhaps even more to one who had two sisters. There’s something about three, as Chekhov noted.
Sisters reunite at various times in adulthood, still fraught with childhood issues, memories of mother and dad, and a kind of ingrained pecking order.
Wasserstein’s three discuss men, children and sex as sisters are wont to do. When the free-spirited Pfeni Rosensweig (Deirdre Lovejoy), the much-married Sara Goode (Janet Zarish) and the overtly successful Gorgeous Tietelbaum (Jackie Hoffman) say to hell with tea and settle down to bib wine on the sofa in Sara’s London drawing room, it’s almost too painfully familiar and rife with love to bear.
Wasserstein has a gift for truthful, comic dialogue and eccentric characters, and this play, directed by David Warren on Alexander Dodge’s sumptuous set, abounds in them.
Having missed their mother’s final illness because she was in India, Pfeni comes to London for Sara’s birthday. Gorgeous follows.
A journalist, Pfeni has never settled down. Her current boyfriend, Geoffrey Duncan (Tom Nelis) is a bisexual stage director and a true soul mate. Sara, who has moved away altogether from Jewish identity and religious practices, lives alone and has a casual, philandering boyfriend (Marty Lodge). Sara’s daughter (Stefanie Nava) is about to run off with a foreign political activist (Mark J. Sullivan).
Always ready with advice and emollients, Gorgeous is known as “Dr. Gorgeous” for her hometown U.S.A. call-in radio program, and is soon to get a television show. Having done all the traditional things, she has perfect children and an apparently happy marriage to a successful attorney, She longs for something more, however, namely Ferragamo shoes and haute couture.
Hoffman is riotously funny, physically and facially. Possessed of a beautiful voice, Zarish is painfully lonely and elegant. Lovejoy’s Pfeni is achingly at sea.
Along comes a stranger named Mervyn Kant (Mark Blum), a widowed furrier from New York and a friend and theatrical supplier of Geoffrey’s. He is everything that Sara ran away from. Blum is a sweet, gauche midlife nebbish, a genuine and kind man.
The play is rife with music ” Sara sang in a vocal trio as a youth. Cris O’Bryon is vocal director and those who sing do so affectingly and naturally.
The nimble and talented Nelis quite steals the show with his virtuosic dancing and posing, and he makes a convincing lover as well.
David Woolard’s costumes are fetching, particularly when it comes to Georgeous’ outrageous attire. Lit by Jeff Croiter with sound by Paul Peterson, it’s another of those beautiful productions we’ve come to expect of the Globe.
Recipient of a Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award for “The Heidi Chronicles” in 1989, Wasserstein (1950-2006) never married. Mother of a 7-year-old daughter, she died in January from complications of lymphoma.
She imbued each character in “The Sisters Rosensweig” with parts of her glorious, funny and sad self.
“The Sisters Rosensweig” continues through Aug. 20 at the Old Globe Theatre, Balboa Park. For tickets ($19-$59), visit www.theoldglobe.org or call (619) 23-GLOBE.
Elsewhere on stage:
“\u00a2 Delicia Turner Sonnenberg directs a mixed-bag company in New Village Arts fifth season of free Shakespeare in the Park. The trip this year is worthwhile because of artistic director Francis Gercke’s unusual take on the title role in the Bard’s great tragedy, “Hamlet,” continuing at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday only on the lawn at the Performing Arts Center, La Costa Canyon High, 1 Maverick Way, Carlsbad. For information, visit www.newvillagearts.org or call (760) 433-3245.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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