A Black and White Cookie

Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
Sky Pilot Theatre 
Through August 20

 You can almost hear the mechanisms clanking behind playwright Gary Morgenstein’s A Black and White Cookie, now being presented by SkyPilot Theater at Anthony Meindl’s Actor Workshop.

Protagonist Harold (Tommy Franklin), a Black Vietnam vet who has run a New York newsstand for the past 30 years, has just reopened after the Covid shutdown. However, Harold’s lease has expired, and since he cannot afford the whopping rent increase, he is being forced to vacate at the end of the month.

That’s the trigger that calls his regular customer Albie (Morry Schorr), a fiery-eyed Jewish activist who spouts off about fascism, capitalism, and every “ism” in between, back into battle. Convincing the initially reluctant Harold to fight his eviction, the two mount a social protest campaign. When Harold’s niece Carol (Aisha Kabia), who plans to give Harold a home with her in Clearwater, Fl., learns of their plans, she is livid. She fears that Harold will lose the 25 grand he has been offered as a payout, leaving him almost penniless.

Moreover, Carol, whose father committed suicide after being ruined by a conniving Jewish lawyer and his associate, is a virulent anti-Semite who thinks that Albie is manipulating Harold so that he can get a share of the settlement.

Cookie sometimes feels as if Morgenstein threw ideas at the wall and used what stuck in this belabored wannabe buddy comedy. He strives for humor mingled with pathos, but an antic story line and superficial characters strand him in artificiality. Compounding the problem is plodding pacing, but whether that derives from Franklin and Schorr’s line hesitancies or director Tudy Roche’s staging is debatable.

We learn that Carol is gay in the most cursory fashion — an expedience, we suspect, that is more Morgenstein’s attempt to appear topical than it is an organic expression of who Carol actually is. Then we have Mitchell (Dylan Bowers), a young leftist who promises to feature the men’s mission statement in his online forum, an oddly tacked-on scene that functions more as filler than a substantive device to further the action. And when Harold belatedly reveals he is a Republican — prompting Albie’s agonized “say it ain’t so” reaction — it seems another perfunctory ploy for a few more laughs

An attempt at pathos arises when we learn that Albie is homeless, which prompts Harold to take him in, which prompts Carol to throw Albie out into the rain. And just when we thought Morgenstein was getting into some meaty stuff about the nature of racism and bigotry, Carol’s vicious views about Jews go magically “poof.”

Perhaps her turnaround is prompted when she learns that Albie is “the only homeless Jew in New York” (a somewhat crass and reductionist “laugh” line.) But suddenly, we have Team Albie, Carol and Harold, all battling together to prevent Albie’s eviction. And somehow, during their lightning transition into a unified force, that 25 thousand has become inconsequential. In fact, there’s even some discussion about whether it would be morally advisable to accept the cash.

When Albie and Harold finally meet with the detested landlord — or make that landperson — they learn that she is Ms. J.N. Pham (Laura Trent), a very nice and understanding Vietnamese-American woman whose South Vietnamese family escaped the Viet Cong. Forced to raise Harold’s rent through economic necessity, Ms. Pham fully honors Harold’s service back in ‘Nam. In fact, she winds up paying Harold’s settlement out of her own (not the company’s) account. I guess that makes it acceptable for him to accept the cash, which he then promptly uses to open yet another newsstand.

But aren’t newsstands, in the age of online media, relatively obsolete? But then, so is this crumbling and anachronistic Cookie.

SkyPilot Theatre Company, 905 N. Cole St., Hollywood. Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 3 pm: thru Aug. 20. https://cookie.bpt.me.  Running time: one hour and 20 minutes, without an intermission.