In what may turn out to be the performance of the season, award-winning San Diego actor Jessica John stars as the Holocaust survivor Lusia in North Coast Repertory Theatre’s excellent production of “A Shayna Maidel.”
It is curious but true that someone could live this long without having seen Barbara Lebow’s moving 1984 play, the Yiddish title of which translates “a pretty girl.”
The plot concerns Mordecai Weiss (Ralph Elias), who left his wife (D. Candis Paule) and eldest daughter Lusia in Poland while he traveled to New York City with his 4-year-old, Rose (Christy Hall). The family was to be reunited, but the Nazi invasion of Poland intervened, and all but Lusia, by then married with child, perished. Her husband, Duvid (Christopher M. Williams) has been missing since 1940.
The play begins in March 1946, and we find the grown-up, thoroughly American Rose has a job and her own unbelievably bright (scenic design by Marty Burnett) apartment on the West Side.
She strives for independence from Mordechai, who refuses to talk about her mother and her sister. He is a strict, kosher patriarch, not warmly paternal. Mordecai surprises Rose with the news that Lusia, a concentration camp survivor, has been found and is coming to live with Rose. Clueless and self-centered, Rose initially reacts petulantly, but when the ravaged Lusia arrives she becomes solicitous, almost maternal, and sets about fattening her sister up and making her feel welcome.
Lusia, who is remarkably resilient and courageous, carries a doll intended for her murdered daughter. She frequently lapses into fantasy scenes with mama, Duvid and a girlfriend (Maya Baldwin) that are enacted before our eyes. There are two devastatingly real scenes. In the first, she and her father compare lists of the missing. Without exception, Lusia fills in the fates of loved ones and relatives, all perished. In the other, Mordecai delivers Mama’s kerchief, given to him years before by a countess for whom she worked. Inside is a revelatory letter that exposes the cause of Mordecai’s extreme suffering. To say more would be a spoiler.
As played by Elias and Hall and directed by David Ellenstein, the roles of Mordecai and Rose are extremely difficult. Mordecai is stiff, cold and almost hateful in his treatment of his children; Rose seems unbelievably shallow, almost valley girl in her attitudes, an anachronism if ever there was one.
Nonetheless, “A Shayna Maidel” is a remarkably cathartic play, not to be missed. Take two hankies.
“A Shayna Maidel” continues at 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, and 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays, through March 23 at North Coast Repertory Theatre, 987-D Lomas Santa Fe Drive, Solana Beach.
For tickets and info, call (858) 481-1055 or visit www.northcoastrep.org.
