What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank
Read: What We Talk About When We Talk About Being Jewish. Debbie and Lauren were best friends when they were young and Orthodox, but that was 20 years ago, before Lauren got religion and Debbie lost it, before Debbie married Phil and moved to Miami and Lauren married Mark and moved to Israel. But today, the religious Jews are stopping by to visit the secular Jews, and vodka or no vodka, very little time is spent on the usual pleasantries. Instead of the standard, "What a lovely home!" Phil leads with "All this house and one son?" Never mind the extravagance: he's got 10 daughters, you see, and isn't afraid to use a term like "living Holocaust" to describe Jewish couples failing to make more Jews and Jewish singles failing to marry other Jews. After all, the result is the same: fewer Jews! Not to be outdone in the Department of Outrageous, Outlandish, and Outre, Mark is ready with his own riff on the restaurants at an imagined Holocaust-themed addition to Disney World. Vietnamese? "Never Pho Get." And it goes on from there.
Of course, it's not all arguments over history and Israel and right living; it isn't even mostly that. Playwright Nathan Englander only turns to an issue when it helps to illuminate a person, or, failing that, their worldview. It's fast and furious going, almost too much at times for the cast to fully inhabit — unless maybe it's a directorial choice to take it easy on the audience by not letting them luxuriate in the emotion inherent in their dazzling, devastating words. Even so, it's a riveting ride, ably depicting both those who have found a happy home in God and tradition and those for whom those things feel like a perverse and primitive prison — right up until the curious, even frustrating ending.
When
Ongoing until Sunday, October 23, 2022
Hours
| Sundays, 2pm & 7pm |
| Tuesdays, 7pm |
| Wednesdays, 7pm |
| Thursdays, 8pm |
| Fridays, 8pm |
| Saturdays, 2pm & 8pm |