I said there would be a lot to chew on and I was very right about that. My friend I was with has an early flight and had to head home as soon as we got out. But, we could've gone for a three course sit-down meal where we only talked about this show and I still don't think we'd be done discussing it. I need to get other people to see it mostly so that I can dissect it with them. I occasionally wonder about a career theatre criticism and it's shows like this that make me wish I had a professional outlet for dissecting and sharing thoughts. It's the type of show where it would be difficult to assign a star rating or grade it because my thoughts are so complex. It also feels daunting to go first here. I am not used to having almost no clue how other people felt about something. But, I promised thoughts, so here they are.
Structure-wise, the play is mostly a series of conversations between Josh Radnor's character Asaf, a lefty Berkeley-born Israeli-American professor, and various people in his life in the lead up to and fallout from his signing of a social justice manifest that he agrees with "99%," but includes an inflammatory paragraph about Israel seemingly unrelated to the rest of its content. Conversations might be a bit of an overstatement though. Everybody gets their time to speak here, but it's more monologuing back and forth than it is actual conversations.
I found the first act to be very effective and it definitely drew me in. It sets up the manifesto well (it was written by Asaf's ex and is championed by a favorite student of his) as well as his reservations and the multitudes of viewpoints regarding Israel/Palestine surrounding him. I loved the overlapping scene transitions that created a great flow. It was also VERY funny. Like Asaf (and presumably Itamar Moses) I am a Bay Area Jew who did Jewish youth group and summer camp where you go into the woods and sing hippy Jewish songs. There was a whole discussion of that brand of Judaism and I couldn't keep it together because it was so accurate.
The second act got off to a fiery start that will definitely both invigorate and piss off anyone with strongly held views on Israel/Palestine (in any direction). It brings up some very complex and interesting ideas, but then it just falls apart. It gets where Moses wants to go and there were still a lot of interesting ideas, but there is so much that happens that just felt so strange and out of place. There was some shockingly bad decisions made here. Characters have a sudden changes in their characterizations, they make very strange choices, and a police brutality plot kinda hijacks the story. It had been the original impetus for the creation of the manifesto and a march was set up as something occuring in the near future. But, then it basically disappeared for most of the show. Once it returns deep into the second act, the play seems to forget it was about Israel/Palestine. That shift comes right after an argument about Jews' and Antisemitism's exclusion from social justice circles and that made the shift even more jarring. Then suddenly his wife is fired for... reasons... Then she's leaving him for... more reasons... and it was just a mess.
My single biggest complaint that I think just needs to be fixed is that, for no apparent reason, the last scene is set on a Saturday in October, 2023. That means that it has to be either on or after October 7th, but there is no mention of 10/7 or the war in Gaza. It seems like such a missed opportunity, but also something that would be easy to avoid altogether. Was there subtext I was missing? Because it seems that you could change maybe 2 lines in the show or just change the setting from 2023 to 2022 in the Playbill and this issue goes away. I'm curious why Moses felt the need to set it then.
Back to the some closing positives, I thought this cast was amazing. Radnor did such a great job oscillating between this very quiet and reserved guy taking beating after beating and someone who can stand up for himself and throw it right back. Asaf's views could be summed up as a lot of individual little strongly held opinions that exist in an amorphous cloud that doesn't resemble a distinct ideology. Radnor does a great job navigating the nebulousness of his character. The supporting cast was very strong too with the standout being Cherise Boothe. She had great chemistry with Radnor as both Nakia and the Rabbi.
Overall, I think this is one people will just need to see for themselves. There is so much going on that it's hard to convey things in this format and I feel like this was much more for me to get it out than for anyone to read. I'm curious what others think, though!
