Southern
Comfort Shabbos
by
Michael Dresdner
L to R: Steven Walker, Stacie Hart All photos by Dennis K Photography
Set in
Atlanta at Christmastime in 1939, The Last Night of Ballyhoo, which opened Friday
at Tacoma Little Theatre, opens a window into the world of well-off Jews in the
deep south. Presented as an unabashed comedy, it abounds with funny, quirky,
and thoroughly entertaining characters blessed with equally funny dialog.
Director Jeff Kingsbury kept the pace apace, and chose an extremely talented
ensemble cast that made the play delightful to watch.
Ballyhoo
is a yearly festival for southern Jews, and culminates with a socially
imperative dance on the last night. It’s a time when a young single Jewish woman
wants to appear in the right dress and on the right squire’s arm. Much of the action in the play revolves around
the two young women in the Freitag/Levy household , a grand home in a wealthy
section of Atlanta, and how these two very different characters approach the problem
of whose arm to grace at the Ballyhoo dance.
L to R: Jill Heinecke, Russ Holm
Adolph
Freitag (Russ Holm) is the patriarch of a household that consists of his
widowed sister, Boo Levy (Stacie Hart) and her daughter Lala Levy (Katelyn
Hoffman), and his widowed sister-in-law, Reba Freitag (Kim Holm) and her
daughter Sunny Freitag (Jill Heinecke). Where Sunny is a smart and somewhat
reserved Wellesley student more interested in her mind than her dates, her
cousin Lala is a would-be social butterfly, consumed with the new Gone With The
Wind movie and focused largely on snagging just the right beau.
L to R: Steven Walker, Kelly Mackay
Sunny rather
inadvertently lands Joe Farkas (Kelly Mackay), a New York Jew who Adolph hired
and brought south. The problem is that Joe, a “real” Jew, is baffled and rather
disappointed with Sunny’s lack of religious awareness.
L to R: Jill Heinecke, Kelly Mackay
Meanwhile,
the somewhat envious Lala sets her sights on Peachy Weil (Steven Walker.)
Peachy is the one character on stage that is almost a flat-out comic stereotype,
a wealthy, garishly dressed, loud braying ass of an entitled young man, one of
the “right” sort of Southern Jews. While this can be called scenery chewing in
some situations, here it works perfectly as a single glaring counterpoint, in
part because Walker crafted the character so adroitly.
These
Atlanta Jews are what my mother would have called “g’ligum layd’n din Jews” (ersatz
or imitation Jews), and what Hillel
calls “bagel and lox Jews,” or Jews in name only. Almost completely clueless
about religious rituals, holidays, or even common Yiddish or Hebrew words and
phrases, they are seen in the opening scene decorating their annual Christmas
tree.
L to R: Kelly Mackay, Katelyn Hoffman
What
they are aware of is that in spite of their wealth, they are at times
discriminated against. Strangely, though, they belong to a subset of European
Jews who in turn discriminate against another subset of European Jews, those
who come from east of the Elba river. Bear in mind this is 1939, and that sort
of local origin discrimination went away, for the most part, after the
Holocaust was revealed.
New
Yorker Joe Farkas is one of the “wrong” type of Jews, yet on another level, he
looks down on Sunny’s lack of her own religious awareness. But don’t worry. It’s
a comedy, so it will all work out fine in the end.
L to R: Jill Heinecke, Russ Holm
Every
member of this superb ensemble cast deserves praise, for convincingly
consistent southern accents and beautifully crafted characters, but allow me to
spotlight just a few. Russ Holm creates a wide ranging, rubber faced, picaresque
Adolph whose perfect comedic timing and offhand droll responses, both
physically and vocally, are simply flawless. But after Sunny asks if he’s ever
been in love, he changes the pace convincingly with a shy, bittersweet story of
an unrequited crush from afar.
Kim Holm
Kim Holm
(coincidence?) does an equally fine job creating a comical and thoroughly
endearing Reba, a chirpy, well-intentioned mix of motherly wisdom and genteel
Southern cluelessness. I just loved watching her. In perfect counterbalance was
the more serious and focused Boo (Stacie Hart) who is all about steering and
protecting her daughter, whatever course that may take.
L to R: Stacie Hart, Katelyn Hoffman
All this
is played out on a beautifully elegant set by Blake York, painted by Jen York,
and in a huge array of superb costumes by Michele Graves, from Lala’s bizarre Tara
dress and Peachy’s shocking argyle, to the more sedate and apt outfits
befitting the station and nature of the others. Lighting by Niclas Olson was
excellent (I especially liked the car headlights behind the oriel windows),
and sound was jointly by Chris Serface and stage manager Nena Curley.
As
thoroughly impressive as this was, there are just a couple of minor points that
bothered me, and one was Joe Farkas. Don’t get me wrong; Mackay was charming,
delightful, and perfect for the role. It’s just that a New York Jew familiar
with Yiddish speaks a certain way and with a rhythm that goes beyond mere
pronunciation. At one point he says to Sunny “a shaynum dank dir im pupik,”
(thanks for nothing) and I had trouble understanding what he was saying even
though I grew up hearing that phrase, and a whole lot of other Yiddish as well.
Again, it’s
a minor point, but while I am on minor points, the curtain call was, well,
overdone, especially for what really is an ensemble offering. It had me
yearning for something shorter and simpler, and I’m undoubtedly not alone in
this. In my experience, most actors despise elaborate curtain calls, but it
seems many directors love them. Ok, enough whining about minutiae.
Here’s
what you really need to know. This is a charming, very funny, fast-paced, and
thoroughly engaging play chock full of some of the finest actors you’ll see
plying their craft. There was not a single weak link in the entire cast, and
their skill and synergy turned an excellent, lighthearted slice-of-life
ensemble offering into an absolute must see play.
The Last
Night of Ballyhoo
March 4
to March 20,2016
Tacoma
Little Theatre
