Sharae Foxie and Zeke Goodman (Photo by Cooper Bates)
Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Echo Theater Company at Atwater Village Theater
Through April 28
Stephen Laughton’s One Jewish Boy looks at the relationship between a Jewish man from a comfortably affluent family in North London and a woman of color from a South London working class neighborhood. Even before it begins, there are signs that their story will not go well. The bodings are implicit in the set, visible on the curtainless proscenium, where scenic designer Justin Huen has positioned a few shabby furnishings and encircled them with dark, graffiti-slathered slats that loom for the duration of the play.
And sure enough, when the play does begin, we’re at the end of their story, with the marriage between these two once mutually adoring people seemingly on the rocks. We’re in their living room, with their toddler asleep offstage. Alex (Sharae Foxie) has returned after a month’s unexplained absence to present Jesse (Zeke Goodman) with divorce papers. He’s both baffled and pleading, as smitten with this woman as he’d been 16 years prior when they met, stoned out of their minds, at a party in Ibiza.
Laughton’s non-linear narrative leapfrogs about in the years in-between, highlighting the high and low points of their romance as well as one crucial happening that overshadows all others: Jesse’s severe beating on the street at the hands of a rabid anti-Semite. The event cements Jesse’s awareness of his Jewish identity and fuels a paranoia that becomes a wedge between himself and his lady love, whose experience as a woman — and specifically a woman of color — makes her familiar with living as a target for preying hands and eyes.
Indeed, what earmarks One Jewish Boy as distinct from countless other plays about troubled twosomes is the ethnicity element and its setting against the backdrop of rising anti-Semitism, in Britain in general and within the Labour Party in particular. During those years more than a few Labour MPs made questionable statements about the role of Jews in public life, with the actions, associations and remarks of Party leader Jeremy Corwyn stirring heightened indignation among Jews, non-bigots and his more enightened colleagues. Here, the behavior of Corbyn has prompted the hypersensitive Jesse to switch Party affiliation, angering Alex who supports Corbyn’s left-leaning views.
But any audience member looking for textural characters or an in-depth exploration of the pressures society exerts on biracial couples or a searing probe of the conflagration around accusations of antisemitism (currently blazing, by the way) will be disappointed. The narrative features an ongoing heated discussion between Alex and Jesse about whether or not their boy should be circumcised, and one intense and angry scene in front of their child’s pram after Jesse parades his switch to the Liberal Democrats (a centrist political party) by pasting the pram with their stickers. There’s also a satisfying climactic encounter near the end where we finally come to understand why Alex has withdrawn from their marriage. Otherwise, much of the dialogue in interspersing scenes is taken up with commonly recognized inter-couple recriminations or, more irksomely, lovey-dovey banter, a chunk of which might be cut without losing any essential elements of the story.
Nonetheless, the production, adeptly directed by Chris Fields, moves at a nimble pace, with the nuances of intimacy and affection effectively staged. Early on, Goodman establishes Jesse’s vulnerability and his near desperate love for Alex, which he convincingly carries through to the end. Foxie’s Alex is more of a cypher and somehow less persuasive; the character as written is sketchily drawn and the performance, while adroit and professional, doesn’t quite fill in the gaps.
Throughout, a background score by the band automaker relays the throbbing disharmonious stress the characters undergo. Matt Richter’s lighting and sound serve to punctuate the paranoia and uncertainty that eats at Jesse’s being, while Dianne K. Graebner’s costumes enable the quick changes that reflect what’s happening at that moment in these characters’ lives.
Echo Theater Company, Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., Atwater. Mon. and Fri., 8 pm, Sat., 7 pm, Sun., 4 pm, Thurs., April 10, 17, and 24, 8 pm; thru April 28. www.EchoTheaterCompany.com Running time: approximately 90 minutes with no intermission
