Sonia Flew

Once upon a time, three young adults left home for good: the first fled Nazi-occupied Poland to live with relatives in the United States; the third answered a call within himself to serve his country after 9/11; and fifteen-year-old Sonia touched down alone in Miami shortly before the Bay of Pigs Invasion rocked her home country of Cuba. Melinda Lopez's complex and evocative Sonia Flew, a co-production now at the Jewish Ensemble Theatre, examines the path we expect our lives to follow, how outside forces can warp and sever that trajectory, and what happens in the aftermath. The play's internally and externally turbulent struggles of balancing opposing family and national identities is made all too palpable by David Wolber's marvelous direction and the work of a pitch-perfect cast.

In the late 2001 of the first act, adult Sonia (Milica Govich) is in the throes of an acute but nonspecific anxiety, which finds a legitimate, full-throttle outlet when her son (Russ Schwartz) announces that he has dropped out of college in order to join the Marines. Her inability to come to terms with his news blows up another tenuous situation: the apparently un-religious family's rare observance of Shabbat, in which it falls upon Catholic-born Sonia to recite the blessing. As Zak, Schwartz displays sides of conviction and adult behavior as well as the petulant self-righteousness that seems to prevent his mother from trusting his decision making. Govich's anger is solidly based in a pleading incapacity to cope, and Jon Bennett as Sonia's husband gives a subtle example of a troubled marriage eroding against both partners' wills.

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The God of Isaac

The Internet swears that The God of Isaac is a comedy; I say that's not the whole truth. Instead, what the Jewish Ensemble Theatre and director Christopher Bremer serve up for two hours is a deceptively light approach to serious questions of faith and culture. It's funny, but don't be fooled — comedy alone can't make you feel nearly this much.

The play has a layered meta structure: Isaac Adams (Michael Brian Ogden) has written a play, about himself, and this is it, and he's in it, and he plays himself. (It works better on stage than it does in print.) Keep in mind that Isaac Adams is a character, and that the play was actually written by James Sherman, and that everything that plays out is scripted, because the production does a fine job of trying to make the viewer forget. Front and center on designer Sarah Tanner's city apartment/front stoop for nearly the entire show, Ogden spends much of his time talking directly to the audience in a narrative role, adding story details and anecdotes and providing commentary about his own feelings, but he also takes part in scenes with characters identified only as "Actor" and "Actress." The predominant sense is that Isaac is, by contrast, real, that this is a private expedition playing out in front of a paying crowd — so much so, in fact, that one almost forgets to credit Ogden for wholly disappearing into the role. His command of the audience and differentiation of scripted moments from supposedly off-the-cuff dialogue (remember, still just as scripted) makes it easy to accept that he is playwright/actor Isaac, digesting these issues in real time as well as in the world of the show. And he does it all while battling the ultimate heckler: his Jewish mother.

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Palmer Park

One part history lesson, one part local-hero narrative, and one part victory lap, Joanna McClelland Glass's Palmer Park hits home because it is home. Any success story in Detroit, even a relatively short-lived one from four decades ago, remains cause for celebration. Now, economic turmoil and vanishing industry contributes to the city's bottomed-out property values and high crime rate; back in 1968, it was civil unrest, when "integration" generally signaled not diversity, but white flight.

The Palmer Park neighborhood of Detroit was one shining exception, a middle-class neighborhood fiercely united in its dedication to maintain the integrated balance of 35% black, 65% white. (Any more residents of color, the logic went, and "white eyes" would be scared away.) In its professional US premiere at the Jewish Ensemble Theatre, directed by Yolanda Fleischer, the play documents the political and human implications of a concept that succeeded until it failed.

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The Tale of the Allergist's Wife

This review was a long time coming — at least two days later than I intended to post. Unfortunately, the extra time hasn't softened my frustration with this show. Don't get me wrong, The Tale of the Allergist's Wife isn't a bad production: for me, bad outings inspire malaise, not agitation. Instead, the conviction that's nagged at me since I left the Jewish Ensemble Theatre is that this one could and should have been better.

Charles Busch's plot-driven script concerns Marjorie Taub (Kate Willinger), who we meet in the throes of lamentation of the "idle rich" variety. She's bereft at the death of her therapist, and all the graduate-level literature and culture in the world can't shake off the sense that her life took a wrong turn somewhere. Enter Lee Green (Lynnae Lehfeldt), a childhood friend turned world-traveling mover and shaker, littering the scene with dropped names. However, suspicion quickly builds in Marjorie's husband, Ira (Phil Powers), and her mother, Frieda (Henrietta Hermelin); as immersed in Lee's world as Marjorie has become, no one else has even lain eyes on the woman — a conflict that comes to a head in a snappy and perfectly paced scene at the end of the first act. The second act shifts gears to examine a relationship that turns toxic, and the ending is predictably preachy-cathartic.

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The Big Bang

The premise is almost disarming: performers Greg Trzaskoma and Brian Thibault (using their actual names) have written a musical. An expensive, bloated Titanic of an epic musical — ship or film, both apply. And they're pitching it to you, their audience of potential investors and sponsors.

Such is The Big Bang, the title of both the "proposed" show and this current offering by the Jewish Ensemble Theater. It brings something new to the genre, a fine solution to the problem of staging a traditional musical: all the people, the costumes, the orchestra! Here, Stacy Cleavland doubles as music director and the third cast member, single-handedly providing live accompaniment and delivering a few great jokes of her own. Director Mary Bremer establishes immediate contact between performers and audience that completely blurs the lines of pre-show and the play's start, delightfully heightening the unconventional portrayal. The conceit of pitching the play instead of performing it also allows for numerous descriptions of the artists' visions for the final product, each as gaudy and costly as a Las Vegas revue.

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