Jonathan Slavin and Andy Robinson (Photo by Jackson Davis)
Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
The 6th Act at the Skylight theatre
Through February 4
RECOMMENDED
In Biblical times, harvest festivals were pretty much de rigueur. The ancient Hebrews were no exception, and the Jewish holiday which emerged from this essentially pan-cultural tradition came to be known as Sukkot, a 7-day-plus affair where people constructed huts made with branches, leaves and straw. So as to brand it as specifically Jewish, Jewish historians and myth weavers conceived an association between the wanderings of the exiled Jews in the Sinai desert and these primitive edifices which were said to represent the temporary places of rest the transient nomads built for themselves as they made their way laboriously and rather circuitously to the Promised Land.
As a Jewish kid growing up in an urban American city, I vaguely recall visiting such sukkahs, either at my local synagogue or at the home of more affluent and observant family friends or relatives. (We never had one because (1) we lived in a tiny row home and (2) expense and hassle aside, my Dad was a fervent anti-believer.) So the sukkahs to be found elsewhere were a curiosity for me — much as they are for the characters in Sukkot, Matthew Leavitt’s new play.
In the story, a non-Jewish widower Patrick (Andy Robinson) consults with a rabbi on how to cope with his grief for his dead Jewish wife. He’s advised to construct a sukkah and adhere to the practices surrounding the holiday, which the rabbi frames as one of rejoicing. Patrick is instructed to eat and sleep there for the duration of the holiday and to engage in a rite with the lulab, a wand made of a variety of leaves that is waved about in a particular way as a means of expressing joy. Patrick’s enthusiasm for following these dictates seems peculiar at best (and weird at worst) to his three grown children: son Asher (Jonathan Slavin), an unemployed depressive who lives with him, and daughters Mairead (Liza Seneca) and Eden (Natalie Lander), who are visiting. All have problems of their own, of course — Mairead is uptight and controlling and comes off as judgmental, while Eden is a quasi-bohemian with mother/sister issues. This sets the play up as yet another story about fractious siblings and their response to their aging Dad.
On the page, Sukkot starts out a tough sell because the premise it turns on is too out there, at least for me, and not in an especially clever way — that Patrick would become obsessively enamored of a Jewish ritual that in 50 years neither he nor his wife ever practiced (and more, that he would perceive it as a way to assuage his grief). The character’s attempts to convince his children to join him in sleeping under the stars and their subsequent each-in-turn dumbfounded responses are the provender of sitcom. So are the myriad tropes the plot relies on as the various conflicts evolve.
But it only takes a minute or two of relishing Robinson’s earnest, distracted and irresistibly likable older gentleman for misgivings about the production to fall away. The storyline may come off as silly (given its naturalistic framework), but the manifestation of humanity vis-à-vis the performances — Slavin, Seneca and especially Lander, in addition to the outstanding Robinson — are all persuasive, engaging, and very much of truth.
Director Joel Zwick keeps things moving at a satisfying clip. Under his direction, the character-driven aspects of the comedy hit their mark while the requisite poignancy for this kind of story succeeds as well. Marc Mendelson’s scenic design establishes an apt exterior, to which Douglas Gabrielle’s lighting and Christopher Moscatiello’s sound designs add reverberant flavor.
The 6th Act at the Skylight Theatre, 1816 1/2 N. Vermont Ave., Los Feliz. Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 3 pm & 7 pm; thru Feb. 4. https://the6thact.ludus.com/ Running time: 100 minutes with no intermission.
