Waiting outside a gutted Victoria's Secret, surrounded by echoing tiled hallways, meant even checking into the Stars Hollow Playhouse was a new experience. However, what could have been an offputting or, dare I say, even tasteless moment had a charge of excitement. This is the ground floor to something new. Maybe, just maybe, we were at the beginning of something special. A question answered definitively during the production. Joshua Harmon's play "Bad Jews" is a bold initial outing for a theatre company introducing itself to the world. This provocative title leads us into a contentious family drama centered in the aftermath of a beloved Grandfather's funeral. The three grandchildren engage in a scorched earth battle of words over ownership of Poppi's chai (pronounced Hi.) and the small matter of what it means to be a jew. The script is a back-and-forth war of intellectual snobbery, cultural moral superiority, and visceral familial backstabbing. The kind of play where each individual seems to think there is only one acceptable takeaway, and yet no one agrees. While the script is, without question, written from a Jewish perceptive, the dynamics are familiar to any family.
But what made this evening a success was not simply a well-done choice of play. The quartet who made this production sing would have elevated a far worse script. So let's start with Melody, played by Lea Matarazzo. In some way, the hardest role, as she seems to be truly clueless. This young blond-haired girlfriend would find herself in an awkward situation even under better circumstances. Matarazzo uses her vapidness as a weapon and her lack of thought as a defense mechanism. I'm left with the impression that this young lady chose a life of deliberate self-delusion and thus makes an otherwise sympathetic but weak character far more interesting.
But where her facilitating comes from a lack of character, Christopher Cast's embattled Jonah builds emotional walls in preparation for nonstop verbal shelling. Cast deftly illustrates the survival techniques of those who see shades in a world of black and white. And what makes this performance all the more powerful is the physicality of it. In a play where the score seems to be tallied by who last uttered some devastating insult, Christopher Cast uses his presence to bring peace or increase tension to every moment he claims.
But these poor hostages join us as witnesses to the thunderous fury of our two leads. Daphna, played with sadistic righteousness by Jess Sawyer, and furious conniving Shlomo, aka Liam, brought to life by Tyler Ian Davis. These two characters fuel the fire. Sawyer's approach to Daphna turns a character who could truly be unsympathetic into a complex three-dimensional woman battling her inner demons as she struggles for the chai. Meanwhile, the skillful manner in which Tyler Ian Davis introduces Liam and then proceeds to complicate, redeem, condemn, and embitter the character is a treat to watch. Both actors refuse to let the audience have an easy hero or villain, merging both flawlessly into their portrayals.
The emotional whirlwind is masterminded by Matt Shell, and it's rare to see this kind of directorial sophistication. While emotional power could rage and build throughout the piece, it was punctuated by silences of equal strength. The stage picture moved naturally, but every position highlighted tension, relationships and even foreshadowed oncoming danger. The subtle use of irony during the most passive-aggressive moments, where if we had no context or words, the audience might imagine a cozy domestic scene instead of a hateful cage.
All funds went to Drama Kids, a program that brings the arts to all young folks, for which I am grateful. But I am also grateful that I might have caught the beginning of a theatrical gem in Vorhees.
Lane McLeod Jackson
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