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‘The Last Schwartz’ @ Jewish Theatre
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW. Grade: B
Don’t cry for Jewish Theatre of the South.
The 13-year-old ensemble may be shutting down at the end of the month. But it’s goodbye gift to the city ends with a howl, not a sniffle.
Deborah Zoe Laufer’s “The Last Schwartz” is a terrifically performed, raucously comic ensemble piece that plays like a softer version of Tracy Letts’ riveting portrait of family dysfunction, “August: Osage County.” With its dead patriarch, juicy female characters, dining-table roulette and ghostly metaphysics, the funny-stinging play conceals dark inner secrets under a playful blanket of sexual parlor games, sibling barbs and hissy fits.
The Schwartzes have gathered at their parents’ upstate New York home to commemorate the first anniversary of their father’s death. But as the decorum dissolves into anger and confrontation, we witness an unexpected primal grief that’s deep, all-devouring and unacknowledged: It’s the living mourning the unborn.
Sound like heavy stuff? It is. But it’s heavier on the laughs.
While brother Simon (Jeffrey C. Zwartjes), a nearly blind astronomer, gazes off into the cosmos, sister Norma (Tess Malis Kincaid) bristles at brother Herb (Jared Simon) for propping his feet on their hallowed mother’s coffee table. Herb listens to his barren wife, Bonnie (Kathleen Wattis), describe an “Oprah” segment on Siamese twins. And when little brother Gene (Chris Moses) drops in with his clueless date, Kia — aka “The Fat No More Girl” (Bethany Ann Lind) — the table is set for a twisted late-night pajama game, and an adoption scheme of such perverse proportions that it would make Jerry Springer smile.
Simon’s Herb has the Borscht Belt timing of Jackie Gleason. Moses gives a dependably good performance, though he’s perhaps a little too boyish to capture the hip slickness of a Manhattan filmmaker. Zwartjes’ Simon — a zoned-out, stargazing savant with apocalyptic visions — is, as the script requires, almost invisible.
But these men are just window dressing for the hormonally overwrought Norma and Bonnie — and the Lolita-like Kia. It’s hard to say who chews the scenery harder. But the delightfully zany Lind is a knockout.
Travis George’s scenic design is authentic to the milieu. Mimi Epstein’s elegant soundscape provides just the right mood. And Linda Patterson’s props and costumes are appropriate to characters who are by turns starched and flirtatious — and a story that uses coffee tables and sideboards to stir emotion.
Even if the playwright’s more serious meditations are never fully realized, the show rarely disappoints. Director Freddie Ashley delivers the goods with comic brio. And artistic director Mira Hirsch says goodbye to her 13-year-old ensemble with a stiff upper lip and a heroic mixture of laughter and tears. Mazel tov.
THE 411: 8 p.m. Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. 3 p.m. Sundays. Through May 25. $18-$30. Jewish Theatre of the South, Marcus Jewish Community Center, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. 770-395-2654, jplay.org.
Bottom line: Jewish Theatre of the South ends 13-year run with a juicy comedy — and a dash of existentialism. Finis.
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