Ben Phillips and Anna Kasaybyan in Bad Jews (Paul Bestock) |
Bad Jews
Seattle Public Theater
Through October 25, 2015
Bad Jews, by
Joshua Harmon, on stage now at Seattle Public Theater, is a very personal and
mixed bag experience for me. Jews are a teeny, tiny minority in Seattle and are
often completely overlooked, but Jews have a deep infiltration of theater in
this country (and of course were seminal in the creation of the Hollywood
machine), so there is perhaps an outsized connection to Judaism in theater.
Shana Bestock,
director and artistic director of SPT, wrote an also personal and mixed-emotion
note about this play and her own Jewish identity, so the play seems to hit many
different notes for her, too. I often find myself worried about the execution
of a play in Seattle, where so many don’t hear the specific cadences of Jewish
vocal delivery, and sometimes very funny Jewish plays don’t land any jokes
because their rhythms are totally misplaced.
This is a 90-minute, real-time play about three cousins,
just after their beloved grandfather’s funeral, two of whom want a “chai” – a
gold-form Hebrew word for “life” – that has special meaning for both. They
converge at a one-room apartment in New York with one cousin’s girlfriend, and
have the fight of their lives.