Theater Review

Huntington, SpeakEasy’s Co-Production “The Band’s Visit” Serves Up A Sublime Slice of Life

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The cast of “The Band’s Visit” at the Huntington. Photo by T Charles Erickson

By Shelley A. Sackett

The delightful musical “The Band’s Visit” is a welcome breath of air in the current asphyxiating climate surrounding the war between Israel and Hamas. Its focus is a single night in Bet Hatikva, a tiny Israeli town that feels more like a pit stop on the way to someplace more important than a destination.

“You probably didn’t hear about it,” says Dina (played by a magnificent Jennifer Apple in a star-making performance), the proprietor of Bet Hatikva’s only café and its resident narrator and cynic. “It wasn’t very important.”

As she goes about her business at the café, lamenting her plight in this Podunk town in the middle of nowhere, her fellow residents, workers and perpetual customers join in witty song to echo her sentiments.

Everyone is waiting for something to happen. Everyone is bored. Everyone is “looking off out into the distance/Even though you know the view is never gonna change.”

And then, suddenly, an entire band of Egyptians clad in gaudy, bright powder-blue uniforms shows up as if beamed down from heaven in answer to their unspoken prayer. It is as disorienting as it is exciting.

Jennifer Apple, Brian Thomas Abraham
 

It’s as if the cast from Wes Andersen’s “Budapest Hotel” showed up en masse dressed as bellhops.

The members of the Alexandria Ceremonial Band, led by its uptight, by-the-book conductor, Tewfiq (played with a hint of vulnerability and compassion by Brian Thomas Abraham), seem to be unwitting victims of confusion and ineptness. They are due at the Arab Cultural Center in the thriving city of Petah Tikva. Instead, they have landed in the motheaten town of Bet Hatikva, where they are truly strangers in a strange land.

Making matters worse, there is no bus until the next morning. There are also no hotels. The Egyptians are as stuck as the residents. Not to worry, Dina says. The locals will be happy to host the Egyptians for the night.

And for the next 90 intermission-less minutes, these two very different groups of individuals who do not share the same language or culture will bond in ways that reveal gossamer layers of tenderness, humanity and hope. The ice breaker, it turns out, is music, the universal language of the soul.

Which is lucky for us. With songs by David Yazbek and a script by Itamar Moses, “The Band’s Visit” is as satisfying a musical as it gets. The ballads and character songs blend wisps of haunting Middle Eastern and klezmer melodies and rhythms with poignant, funny Sondheim-quality lyrics. Icing atop this sumptuous cake is the fact that each syllable is crystal clear thanks to perfect enunciation and expert sound.

The action, as it were, takes place as vignettes of intimate interactions between the Israelis and their guests. In the process, we get to glimpse the similarities of sadness, regret, dashed dreams and promises unfulfilled that they all share. These seemingly disparate people, Egyptians and Israelis, learn there is more that joins than separates them when politics are ignored.

The salve of that message alone is reason enough to see this show. The pitch-perfect production under Paul Daigneault’s direction and stand-out acting and musicianship raise the bar to a sublime level.

Kareem Elsamadicy, Jesse Garlick

As Dina, Apple is riveting. She brings fire (think Selma Hayek), ice and a powerful set of pipes to the complicated woman who rages against life’s disappointments while being unable to let go of her lifeline of hope. Her body language is eloquent and articulate. The scenes between her and Tewfiq, where each reveals their most secret secrets, are heartbreaking. In another life, at a different time, these two could have been a match made in heaven.

Everyone benefits from these chance encounters, learning more about themselves in the course of learning more about the “other.” An Egyptian clarinetist and assistant conductor help Itzhak and Iris, a floundering young couple on the brink of losing the thread of their union. A Don Juan hopeful trumpeter (Kareem Elsamadicy) gives the socially awkward Papi (a scene-stealing Jesse Garlick) a lesson in how to approach girls.

There is also laughter, mirth and the delight of cast members who do double duty as musicians. It is pure magic each time the six members of the band break into song on stage.

By morning, when it’s time for the band to depart, things have shifted. There is a new melancholy in the air, yet it is not borne of despair or sadness. Rather, it stems from the experience of how one single night can change a person — and an entire community — in a profound way that leaves hope in its wake.

Marianna Bassham, Andrew Mayer, Robert Saoud, James Rana, Jared Troilo

Dina and Tewfiq face each other for the last time, sharing both the joy of having discovered that there is a comforting home even for their shattered hearts and the pain of knowing that that bed will never be feathered. When Tewfiq raises a palm to Dina and she raises her back, the emotional gravitas of their goodbye ranks right up there with Rick and Ilsa’s embrace on the tarmac in “Casablanca.”

“Nothing is as beautiful as something you don’t expect” is a common refrain. By the play’s end, every character has been transformed in some indelible way by the band’s unexpected visit. And, after experiencing 90 minutes of a music-filled world devoid of ethnic conflict and invectives, where Arabs and Jews connect and share just as regular folks looking out for each other, so have we.

For information and to buy tickets, go to https://www.huntingtontheatre.org/

“The Band’s Visit” — Music and Lyrics by David Yazbek. Book by Itamar Moses. Based on the Screenplay by Eran Kolirin. Directed by Paul Daigneault; Choreography by Daniel Pelzig. Music Direction by José Delgado. Scenic Design by Wilson Chin and Jimmy Stubbs. Costume Design by Miranda Kau Giurleo. Lighting Design by Aja M. Jackson. Sound Design by Joshua Millican. Produced by Huntington Theatre in collaboration with SpeakEasy Stage at 264 Huntington Ave. Boston through December 17.

ASP’s Not-to-Be-Missed “How I Learned to Drive” Explores Abuse and Memory in a Tour de Force Production

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Dennis Trainor, Jr. and Jennifer Rohn in Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s ‘How I Learned to Drive’
(Photo Credit: Nile Scott Studios)

By Shelley A. Sackett

“You and Driver Education — Safety First,”  a voice announces as the lights dim. A middle-aged woman steps onto a bare set, composing herself. She turns to face the audience, addressing them as though mid-conversation.

“Sometimes, to tell a secret, you first have to teach a lesson,” she says. “We’re going to start our lesson tonight on an early, warm summer evening.”

So begins Paula Vogel’s brilliant Pulitzer Prize Award-winning play, “How I Learned to Drive,” in which she examines the complicated ways in which we process the trauma, shame, and blame associated with pedophilia and family complicity. If the topic sounds heart-wrenching and heavy, that’s because it is.

Yet, thanks to superb acting, Elaine Vaan Hogue’s sensitive direction, and Vogel’s candid and non-judgmental script, we grow to care about the characters — all of them, including the predator, Uncle Peck. Although a testament to Vogel’s ability to create a defective character whose humanness prevents us from dismissing him as pure evil, that is perhaps the most disturbing part of the play.

Set in Maryland in the 1960s and ‘70s, the non-chronological scenes are narrated by Li’l Bit (the spectacular Jennifer Rohn), a woman now in her mid-30s who plumbs her memories of the sexual assault she endured beginning at age 11 and continuing until her 18th birthday. The abuse began as a driving lesson, and Vogel uses titles from a guide to a driving handbook as a device to link the nonlinear episodes.

Rohn

As “Drive” moves back in time, from when Li’l Bit was 17 to 15 to 13 and, finally, 11,  the horror and helplessness of the situation hangs heavy. Endowed from a young age with very large breasts, Li’l Bit is ridiculed and bullied at school and at home. Only Uncle Peck (an equally amazing Dennis Trainor, Jr.), whose playful, empathetic, and supportive relationship is a welcome refuge for the isolated and lonely child/woman, seems to understand and care about her. Their relationship forms the backbone of the play.

We watch as Uncle Peck systematically grooms and desensitizes Li’l Bit, nefariously making her his accomplice instead of his victim. “Have I forced you to do anything?” he asks repeatedly as he unlatches her bra with one hand, joking about how boys her own age probably fumble and need her assistance to accomplish the same feat. “Nothing is going to happen between us until you want it to,” he croons. “You just can’t tell anyone.”

Interspersed between the edgy scenes of seduction are narration and a Greek chorus of three (Amy Griffin, Sarah Newhouse, and Tommy Vines, all superb) who deliver monologues and play many roles in family scenes, driving lessons, restaurants, and the schoolyard. In one scene, our hearts ache for 11-year-old Li’l Bit as her family (mother, aunt Mary, Uncle Peck, cousin BB, Grandma and Grandpa) shrieks derisively as they joke about her breasts. No wonder she takes refuge in the kitchen with Uncle Peck as he washes the dishes and converses with her as if she were his peer.

Their weekly driving lessons start shortly after.

As Li’l Bit plumbs her memory, revealing and reliving episodes of these driving lessons and submission to the accompanying sexual abuse, she also reveals how the years of trauma finally caught up with her, leading to her drinking to excess and getting expelled from college. She relives other memories, too, some so painful she can’t deal with them and, continuing the driving metaphor, changes them “like changing stations on the radio.”

Vogel expertly uses humor and slapstick to lighten the emotional load of the unrelenting manipulation and abuse. “A Mother’s Guide to Social Drinking” and “On Men, Sex and Woman” feature bravura performances by Newhouse as Li’l Bit’s mother and make their points while making the audience laugh.

Vogel turns to a monologue by Aunt Mary (also Newhouse) to answer the question of whether Li’l Bit’s family knew what was going on.

Rohn, Sarah Newhouse, Amy Griffin

Turns out, they did.

Alone on stage, Aunt Mary defends her husband, claiming he is the victim of Li’l Bit’s manipulation. She can’t wait for Li’l Bit to go off to college, so things can go back to normal. “I’m a very patient woman,” she states with more than a whiff of menace. ”But I’d like my husband back.”

Even more chilling, if that is possible, is the scene titled, “Uncle Peck Teaches Cousin Bobby How to Fish,” during which it becomes clear that Uncle Peck also assaulted his young nephew BB after baiting and trapping him with the same kindness, gifts and you-can-trust-me-banter he used on his niece. The ruthless and deliberate nature of the premeditated attack, stripped naked of the frisky banter of his encounters with Li’l Bit, unmasks Uncle Peck for the cold-blooded pedophile he is.

Eventually, Li’l Bit breaks free of Uncle Peck on her 18th birthday in a pivotal scene where Uncle Peck exposes how unhinged he has become, and Li’l Bit finally leaves him and their situation for good. The trouble is, the years of trauma have etched an indelible toll on her, one that leaves her reflecting on why Uncle Peck molested her and what responsibility she bears. She ruefully wonders whether she will ever be able to forgive Uncle Peck and, by extension, herself.

As Li’l Bit and Uncle Peck, Rohn and Trainor are spot-on perfection. Trainor captures Uncle Peck’s crushed spirit and underlying aw-shucks grace, his tortured yet thoughtful self. Rohn brings an incandescence to the complex Li’l Bit and the chasms separating her bone-weary adult sadness and giddy little girl appreciation for adult attention and admiration. It is a fine line, and Rohn navigates it effortlessly. A set bare of all but a few chairs, tables, and a bed places the focus squarely where it should be: on the characters.

At the end of the play, Vogel’s script returns to the present. Li’l Bit thinks about her next steps now that she is 35. “That’s getting up there for a woman. I find myself believing in things that a younger self vowed never to believe in. Things like family and forgiveness,” she says.

Rohn, Tommy Vines

Despite everything she has been through and the fact that it all began with her sitting in the driver’s seat, she is grateful for the freedom she feels when she drives, the nearest sensation she can muster of “flight in the body.”

As she sits alone in her car, adjusting her rear view mirror, she notices Uncle Peck sitting in the back. After smiling at him, she steps on the gas pedal and drives away.

Although first produced in 1997, it wasn’t until 2020 that Vogel first spoke about the play as autobiographical. “I didn’t go into this concerned with the forgiveness of that person [Peck is based on]. I went into this concerned with the forgiveness of myself. Because the truth is the children always feel culpable. And the structure of this is me getting to a point where I’m like, ‘You know what? You were a kid. That’s all I wanted, to get there and feel that. And to have it be such a basic truth that my childhood self would accept it,” Vogel said in an earlier interview.

‘How I Learned to Drive’ — Written by Paula Vogel. Directed by Elaine Vaan Hogue. Scenic Design by Baron E. Pugh; Lighting Design by Marcella Barbeau; Costume Design by Marissa Wolf; Sound Design by Mackenzie Adamick. Presented by Actors’ Shakespeare Project at the Roberts Studio Theatre, Calderwood Pavilion, 527 Tremont St., Boston through November 25.

For information and tickets, go to https://www.actorsshakespeareproject.org/how-i-learned/

ELVIS Is Another NSMT Crowd Pleaser

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Dan Berry in “Elvis” at the North Shore Music Theatre. Photo © David Costa Photograph

By Shelley A. Sackett

Who can resist the charm, energy and smoldering heat of that hip-swinging, pelvis-grinding consummate crooner and actor known as Elvis? At Bill Hanney’s award-winning North Shore Music Theatre, fans and fans-to-be of the “King of Rock and Roll” can spend a toe-tapping two and one-half hours (one intermission) as over 40 of Elvis’ most famous songs are belted out by talented Dan Berry while a cast of 29 sings and dances their hearts out to a live orchestra of nine.

Throw in the theater-in-the-round setting with its intimacy and excitement, and you’ve got all the ingredients for an evening of sheer entertainment.

The bio-musical picks and chooses pivotal moments of the cultural icon’s life to explore through song, dance, and drama. (For those thinking of taking their children, be forewarned that Elvis and others have a bit of a potty mouth, and the f**k word is frequently bandied about). We learn about Elvis by eavesdropping on those who knew him best, like the kind and maternal record store owner Betty (a standout Altamiece Carolyn Cooper), who teaches 13-year-old Elvis (Asher Stern) about more than Black gospel music. Through her, he gets a hands-on lesson in what a color-blind world might look like and a taste of what it feels like to be taken seriously by an adult.

The loosely woven plot follows Elvis’ ascension from an impoverished but loving childhood in Tupelo, Mississippi to being discovered by recording studio owner Sam Phillips to his having his contract sold to the conniving, heartless Colonel Tom Parker, who treats Elvis like a prized cow to be milked dry and then sold to slaughter. (David Coffee is spot-on perfect as Parker, shedding an even more shameful light on the dreadful miscasting of Tom Hanks in the role in the 2002 movie biopic. Coffee’s Parker is a John Huston-like character, all imposing charm and smarm until he sinks his teeth into your jugular).

Although the song and dance numbers take up a lot of the evening, there is still enough time to weave a Cliff Notes version of the King’s life. We are a fly on the wall when Elvis is drafted and when he first meets Priscilla. We witness the rapid ups and downs of their courtship and marriage and his devastation at the death of his beloved mother. We watch as Elvis’ many appetites spiral out of control and are heartbroken as his career circles the drain with B- films like “Change of Habit.”

Writers Abbinati and Cercone may have sacrificed a smoothly scripted biographical timeline in favor of including a challenging number of musical and dance numbers, but they nonetheless managed to put enough dramatic meat on its bones to flesh out Elvis as a nuanced and complicated individual. That is no small feat.

Kudos to director and choreographer Kevin P. Hill for keeping the ball rolling with a lively pace and varied dance routines. This reviewer’s particular favorite was “You’re the Boss,” the red hot, sizzling Elvis/Ann-Margaret number pas de deux (Alaina Mills is riveting).

Although long and a bit repetitive, “Elvis” fits the bill if you’re looking for an evening of the kind of rocking entertainment NSMT is known for.  

Elvis: A Musical Revolution’ at North Shore Music Theatre. Book by Sean Cercone and David Abbinanti. Based on a concept by Floyd Mutrux. Direction and Choreography by Kevin P. Hill. Co-Music Direction by Milton Granger and Robert L. Ruckinski. Scenic Design by Kyle Dixon. Costume Design by Travis M. Grant. Lighting Design by Jack Mehler. Sound Design by Alex Berg. Wig and Hair Design by Rachel Padula-Shufelt. At the North Shore Music Theatre through November 12.

For tickets and more info, visit: https://www.nsmt.org/

Blue Man Group Presses the Refresh Button while Keeping the Best of Its Core

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Blue Man Group

By Shelley A. Sackett

Blue Man Group is a global entertainment phenomenon known for its award-winning theatrical productions, unique characters and multiple creative explorations. With its all-new 2024 show at The Charles Playhouse, it has upped the ante on its high-energy production with new music, two new acts and a finale that feels like a Las Vegas New Year’s Eve celebration, complete with streamers, confetti and bubbles.

Yet, the show remains true to its core, despite the addition of many AI, A/V, and audience participation bells and whistles. Still a euphoric celebration of human connection through art, music, comedy and non-verbal communication, the show features its signature magic of the three bald and blue men who explore today’s cultural norms with wonder, poking fun at the audience’s collective quirks and reminding them how much they all have in common.

The music is infectious, with a great beat that dares the audience to sit still. This show is live and alive, tickling all the senses (especially the ears. The one thing that hasn’t changed is that it is LOUD. You might want to pack earplugs, especially for children).

It is also fun. When the blue men start tossing paintballs into each other’s mouths and spray painting it onto spinning canvases, the veteran attendees breathe a sigh of relief that that old standby routine made the renewal cut.

What hits and misses are the additional tips of the hat to Artificial Intelligence, the Internet, and our relentless and narcissistic obsession with self-documentation. Multi-screens are placed throughout the theater and a camera person shoots video that is broadcast in real-time. There are even ad spoofs for products like “Hope jolt nasal spray” to ease us through our existential crises.

When latecomers are featured on the big screen and called out over the loudspeakers, the gestalt of the experience shifts from funky quirkiness to late-night talk show gimmickry. The same for the segments with audience members, who are solicited and vetted before the show. Some are invited onto the stage to participate in distracting, second-rate skits. One even volunteered to have a camera snake down his throat so he could share his esophageal sphincter with the rest of the audience. On the big screen. In pulsating color.

Yet enough of the original magic and charm remains to satisfy Blue Man Group traditionalists. The modern plumbing musical set, Cap’n Crunch cereal routine, and paint-infused drumming are real crowd-pleasers. Blue Man Group is owned and operated by Cirque du Soleil Entertainment Group, and when that lineage shines through, the show’s underlying charisma does too.

The show remains a family-friendly party with enough content that is over kids’ heads to keep the adults engaged and enough silliness and jaw-dropping effects to keep the kids enchanted. With its excellent music and iconic, charismatic blue men, it is an excellent respite from the dreary onslaught that passes for news and the prospect of 4 p.m. sunsets to come.

Blue Man Group’ – Created, Written and Directed by Matt Goldman, Phil Stanton and Chris Wink. Lighting Design by Matthew McCarthy; Set Design by David Gallo; Video Design by Caryl Glaab. Presented by Blue Man Productions at The Charles Playhouse, 74 Warrenton St., Boston. Ongoing.

For information and tickets, go to www.blueman.com

Huntington’s “Fat Ham” Is A Raucous and Resonant Reinvention of Shakespeare’s Masterpiece, “Hamlet”

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Cast of ‘Fat Ham’ The Huntington Theatre. Photos by T Charles Erickson

By Shelley A. Sackett

“Fat Ham,” winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize Award for best drama, is much more than a modern-day riff on “Hamlet,” one of Shakepeare’s most quoted, performed and adapted plays. Using the bones of the Bard’s tragedy as a structural anchor, the exceptionally talented playwright, James Ijames, has fleshed it out with analogous characters whose feet are firmly planted in the here and now and whose modern-day nightmares and dreams reflect both the mundane and the existential.

Like Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” “Fat Ham” asks the question, “How do we cope in a belligerent world untethered?” and answers it simply: “To thine own self be true.” But instead of engaging in a bloody palace battle over his wearing his father’s coveted crown, this Hamlet wants only to prove his father’s murderer’s guilt and then high tail it to greener, less legacy-laden pastures where he can let down his guard and live an authentic and happy life.

Although full of allusions to the original tragedy about the Danish king (a splendid one-page graphic summary of “Hamlet” by Mya Lixian Gosling is a welcome inclusion in the program), “Fat Ham” stands on its own. Its story is told through the eyes of Juicy/Hamlet (a spot-on Marshall W. Mabry IV), a young, queer Black man marooned in no man’s land with no lifeboat in sight.

The play opens in Juicy’s backyard as Tio/Horatio (the stand-out, gifted Lau’rie Roach), his best friend and greatest advocate, tries to get his buddy to address and snap out of his melancholy. Juicy’s father, Pap, was recently killed in jail, where he was serving time for slitting a man’s throat because he couldn’t stand the smell of his breath.

Tio, more laid back than Juicy, diagnoses Juicy’s problem as more than a reaction to his recent domestic woes. According to Tito (who sees a therapist, so he has cred in this department), Juicy isn’t suffering from individual filial grief. Rather, his is the inescapable condition of Black “inherited trauma.” “Your Pop went to jail; his Pop went to jail. His Pop went to jail. His Pop went to jail, and what’s before that?” he asks. “Slavery.”

As if that weren’t heavy enough, Juicy (like Hamlet) has much more on his plate. His mother, Tedra (a slinky Ebony Marshall-Oliver), married Pap’s brother Rev (James T. Alfred, who also plays Pap) while Pap’s body was still warm. Then, just as the backyard bar-b-q wedding celebration is about to begin, Pap appears to Juicy as a ghost.

Pap is one mean son-of-a-bitch, cursing Juicy for being soft and trying unsuccessfully (he is, after all, a noncorporeal ghost) to beat him to a pulp. Yet, he has a message and directive that Juicy can’t ignore.

Rev was behind Pap’s murder, he tells his son. He insists Juicy man up and avenge his death.

“It’s amazing what fathers think they own just because they share the same name as their son,” Juicy tells Tito, who couldn’t see Pap’s ghost but knows exactly what Juicy means.

Mirroring the relationship he had/has with his father, there is also no love lost between Juicy and Rev, who treats his nephew/son with contempt and one-upmanship, calling him a pansy and stealing his college tuition money to remodel a bathroom worthy of a new man of the house.

What should Juicy do? Be a man, embrace violence and follow in his father’s footsteps? Or take the road advocated by the laidback, don’t-worry-be-happy Tito and reimagine what it means to be a man?

If this sounds solemn and heavy, it is. (Just read the original “Hamlet.”) Yet, in Ijames’ magical hands (and under Stevie Walker-Webb’s razor-sharp direction), such profound topics as: the unending cycle and generational trauma of male violence; sexual and racial inequity, and freedom of identity become manageable because they arrive wrapped in the gift of comedy.

Ijames’s true genius (and no doubt a reason for his well-deserved Pulitzer Prize) is his ability to infuse this story of tragedy and violence with laugh-out-loud jokes, songs, sight gags and such modern props as a karaoke machine. His troupe of lively, original and (other than Rev) compassionate people each literally vibrate to their own rhythm.

Opal/Ophelia (a perfectly cast Victoria Omoregie) is a pouty teenager, chafing at her mother’s heavy-handed directive to be ladylike and wear a dress when all she wants is to join the military and scream at the top of her lungs that she likes girls. Rabby, her rabid liquor-loving, church-lady mother and a stand-in for the equally judgmental Polonious, is played by scene-stealer Thomika Marie Bridwell. Larry/Laertes (the splendid Amar Atkins), Opal’s Marine brother who is also a closet gay, rounds out the cast.

Ijames has many tricks up his sleeve to keep the fast-paced, 90-minute (no intermission) play moving effortlessly. He manages to combine an unlikely list of ingredients (serious soliloquies, characters who break the fourth wall, slapstick, stoner raps, MTV-worthy musical song-and-dance numbers and internal monologues) to create a satisfying, hearty four-course meal.

Luciana Stecconi’s set brings the audience squarely into a lower-middle-class, well-loved, and much-used backyard. Her keen eye and attention to countless details, such as a screen door off its hinge, shows.

The one criticism (and this production is not alone in this department, unfortunately) is that the actors need to have better mics, and their lines frequently need better pacing. Nothing is more frustrating to an audience than when the end of a line is swallowed or a new one begun before laughter from the previous one has died down. Ijames’s writing is too delicious not to savor.

Some have complained that the end is a facile cop-out meant to offer an easy out for the current feel-good streaming culture. Ijames deserves more credit than that. His ending may be upbeat (and a delectable dessert), but it is deliberate and message-laden.

The playwright challenges us to answer Tito’s rhetorical question: What would life be like if we chose pleasure over harm? Judging from the audience’s reaction to the finale, it would be pretty darn good indeed.

Fat Ham’ — Written by James Ijames. Directed by Stevie Walker-Webb, Scenic Design by Luciana Stecconni, Costume Design by Celeste Jennings, Sound Design by Aubrey Dube, Lighting Design by Xiangfu Xiao. Presented by The Huntington Theatre in association with Alliance Theatre and Front Porch Arts Collective at the Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA, 527 Tremont St., through Sunday, October 29, 2023.

For tickets and information, go to: https://www.huntingtontheatre.org/whats-on/fat-ham/

‘Prayer for the French Republic’ chronicles generations of antisemitism

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Carly Zien, Amy Resnick, Will Lyman and Joshua Chessin-Yudin. | PHOTO T Charles Erickson

By Shelley A. Sackett

Nothing crystallizes millennia of antisemitism like the Martyrology Service during Yom Kippur afternoon service. “Why are we so hated?” “Can anyplace ever be truly safe?” and “Where will be next on this list?” we can’t help wondering.

As if on cue, the Huntington Theatre’s season opener speaks to these questions and more with Joshua Harmon’s exceptional “Prayer for the French Republic,” winner of the 2022 Drama Desk Outstanding Play Award. Under Loretta Greco’s razor-sharp direction, Harmon’s themes of antisemitism, assimilation, family, freedom, identity, and fear come to life.

Set in Paris in 2016-17 and 1944-46, “Prayer” follows five generations of Jewish piano sellers. Marcelle Salomon Benhamou, the current matriarch, her husband Charles, and their children, Daniel, 26, and Elodie, 28, are the limbs of the original Salomon family tree.
The play opens with house lights up as Patrick, the play’s narrator and Marcelle’s brother, addresses the audience. His eye-contact and hands-in-trousers-pockets ease establish rapport and immediacy. “What is the beginning of a family?” he asks as he strolls across a set that will represent both 1944 and 2016. “And what,” he doesn’t ask but seems about to, “is its end?”

Abruptly, the calm evaporates. We are in the Benhamou apartment, where Marcelle (the sublimely talented Amy Resnick) is mid-sentence, explaining her convoluted genealogy to Molly, an American cousin who has just arrived to spend her junior year abroad. Only one thing seems clear: Marcelle’s Ashkenazi family has been rooted in French soil for centuries.

Just as Molly sort of gets it, Charles (the always amazing Nael Nacer) bursts through the front door with Daniel, who has been attacked by a gang of antisemitic thugs. Daniel’s face is bloodied, but he is nonplussed. His parents are apoplectic.

“How many times have I begged you to wear a baseball cap?” Marcelle pleads. Daniel teaches at a Jewish school and wears a kippah. She urges her son to acknowledge and adapt to the danger he invites by advertising his religion in a world where antisemitism and fascism are on the rise. What she doesn’t do is entertain any thought of leaving France.

Charles’ reaction is more flight and fright than fight. He has walked this walk and knows where it can lead. He and his North African Sephardic Jewish family have lived in diaspora since antisemitism forced them to flee Algeria in the 1960s.

“It’s the suitcase or the coffin,” he says. “I’m scared. Something is happening.” This wandering Jew is tired of living at the whim of host countries. He wants to go “home.” He wants to move to Israel.

Harmon quietly relocates us to 1944 (Andrew Boyce’s set makes this seamless), where we meet Marcelle and Patrick’s great-grandparents. They sit in their comfortable apartment, wondering what has happened to the rest of their family. Miraculously, they were able to remain in Paris during the war after the Nazi sent to deport them took pity on their age and left them alone. They even kept their piano store.

The rest of the play vaults between these two time periods, connecting them with the overarching question: When is the tipping point between suitcase and coffin? When is it best to leave, even if one’s family has been there for centuries and no other place will ever feel like home?

“You have to trust your instincts,” Charles implores. “It’s all you have.”

Writing cutting, funny, fast-paced, and well-researched dialogue that tackles difficult, uncomfortable topics is one of Harmon’s many attributes. His humor is often dark and our laughter is tainted with discomfort, but he wields his pen judiciously and always hits his introspective mark. He expertly uses Elodie (an electrifying Carly Zien) as his trademark firebrand mouthpiece, and her show-stopping monologue deserves a standing ovation.

Harmon doesn’t ignore the question of whether Israel’s politics have changed our feelings about it being a home for all Jews. Conflating Israel and Judaism has become painfully unavoidable. When Charles expresses his discomfort at reciting “A Prayer for the French Republic” during services, it’s hard not to relate.

Harmon is not pessimistic. We don’t pray to what is, he implies, but for what is not. “What is a prayer but speaking out loud to hope?” a character asks. Yet, can we really call a country whose politics marginalize who we are “home?” By ending “Prayer” with the cast belting out the French anthem, “La Marseillaise,” instead of Israel’s “Hatikvah,” Harmon’s answer, at least for now, seems to be yes.

The play runs through Oct. 8 at the Huntington Theatre, 264 Huntington Ave. Visit huntingtontheatre.org.

SpeakEasy’s “POTUS” Soothes Our Distressed Political Souls With the Balm of Humor

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Cast of SpeakEasy Stage’s production of “POTUS” (Courtesy Nile Scott Studios)

“POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive” by Selina Fillinger. Directed by Paula Plum. Scenic Design by Jenna McFarland Lord. Sound Design by Aubrey Dube. Lighting Design by Karen Perlow. Costume Design by Rebecca Glick. Fight Choreography by Angie Jepson. Presented by Speakeasy Stage at the Calderwood Pavilion, Boston, through October 15.

By Shelley A. Sackett

Hands down, “POTUS” takes the prize for the most winning opening scene currently on stage in Boston. It is shriek-out-loud funny, clever, pithy, lightning-paced, and uncompromisingly no-nonsense.

The setting is The White House, not exactly the Trump administration, but also not exactly not the Trump administration. Two pantsuit-clad women are in mid-conversation when the audience joins them.

Chief of Staff Harriet (Lisa Yuen) is filling in Press Secretary Jean (Laura Latreille) on the morning’s diplomatic meeting and on what POTUS did that she, as press liaison, will have to spin at the press briefing that is about to start.

The play’s first line sets the tone for the rest of the evening. “Cunt,” says Harriet, lassoing Jean’s and the audience’s attention. Apparently, POTUS excused his wife Margaret’s absence by saying she was having a “cunty” day. Beyond the use of the “C” word, the even bigger trouble is that Margaret was in the room. The whole time. Sitting (obscured) right in front of POTUS.

Not to worry. Jean’s job, after all, is to support and protect POTUS and, despite his worst instincts and basest actions, keep him (and herself) in power. She is used to donning rubber gloves and cleaning up the mess. “That’s not so bad. We can contain that,” she says, brightening. “We all have cunty mornings sometimes. My son has them every week.”

Playwright Selina Fillinger’s “POTUS” is aptly subtitled, “Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive.” She has populated her farce/satire with seven strong behind-the-scenes women whose sole purpose is to keep a dangerous and inept man in office, not because they believe in him, but because the only way they are allowed near the epicenter of power is by clinging to his coattails.

Catia, Marianna Bassham, and Johanna Carlisle-Zepeda

In addition to Harriet and Jean, the other women in the president’s inner circle are his savvy, earthy, and jaded wife Margaret (Crystin Gilmore) and his neurotic, perfectionist personal secretary Stephanie (Marianna Bassham). Clearly, these women are the only reason he has a job. They are brilliant, dedicated, and gifted at damage control. What they aren’t is respected, acknowledged, or valued by anyone except each other.

“Why isn’t SHE president?” is the common refrain as each rises to the next challenge and douses the next blaze. The answer boils down to one word — patriarchy. “People don’t love him,” one character explains. They’re just afraid of the alternative — US!”

Add to the mix his cocky, queer, convicted-felon sister Bernadette (Johanna Carlisle-Zepeda), Chris, the recently post-partum reporter whose attire includes breast pump attachments (Catia), and the president’s pregnant girlfriend Dusty (the impossibly flexible Monique Ward Lonergan), and you have all the ingredients for a no-holds-barred satirical farce. There is a little of everything, from door slamming, slapstick, sight gags to dramatic anarchy, comic invective, and mistaken identity.

There’s even a bottle of psychedelic tabs masquerading as Tums.

Yet beneath all this droll merriment are serious messages for these serious times. According to Fillinger, those messages may be political, but they are hardly partisan. The pain and rage that underpin the biting humor in her words are aimed squarely at the White Patriarchy that keeps women in their places and men like POTUS in his.

Director Paula Plum has plumbed the sizeable talents of her extraordinary cast to create an ensemble where each individual performer shines, and the whole is even greater than the sum of its parts, no small feat with these remarkably gifted women.

Laura Latreille, Monique Ward Lonergan

Jenna McFarland Lord has created the perfect set, part “Laugh-In,” with lots of doors to open and slam, and part Pee Wee’s Playhouse, where even the pictures are askew. The result is a dizzying, unhinged quasi-reality, mirroring the conditions our heroines face daily.

Despite her use of potty language, piercing wit, and crude jokes (most of which hit their mark), Fillinger has a serious point to make. What would it be like if these skillful, thoughtful women were able to spend their time actually running the world instead of covering and cleaning up after the inept dumbass who was elected to perform that duty but can’t? Is that idea really that scary?

Asked what she hopes audiences take away from seeing “POTUS,” Fillinger said, “I hope they wake up the next day and put their money, time and votes towards equity and freedom for all,” to which we add, “Amen.” For tix and information, go to: https://speakeasystage.com/

“Prayer for the French Republic” Tackles Existential Issues with Humor, Grit and Gravitas

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Cast of The Huntington’s ‘Prayer for the French Republic’.  Photo by Nile Hawver.

‘Prayer for the French Republic’ – Written by Joshua Harmon. Directed by Loretta Greco. Scenic Design by Andrew Boyce. Costume Design by Alex Jaeger. Lighting Design by Christopher Akerlind. Sound Design and Composition by Fan Zhang. Presented by Huntington Theatre, 264 Huntington Ave., through October 8.

By Shelley A. Sackett

Playwright Joshua Harmon has a gift for tackling important, profoundly challenging and topical subjects and, through sheer brilliance of characters and dialogue, creating intimate and accessible theater that both rivets his audience and leaves them in a standing ovation of thunderous applause.

He did it with “Bad Jews,” “Admissions,” and “Significant Other,” which Boston theatergoers had the good fortune to see at SpeakEasy Stage Company. Thanks to the Huntington Theatre’s season opener, the 2022 Drama Desk Outstanding Play Award-winning “A Prayer for the French Republic,” they have the opportunity to experience this supremely talented writer’s latest and most ambitious project.

And experience it they should.

Under Loretta Greco’s razor-sharp direction, the 11-member cast masterfully brings Harmon’s themes of antisemitism, assimilation, family, freedom, identity and fear — to name a few — to life. Despite its three-hour running time (one intermission), the fast-paced and sharp-witted dialogue makes the time fly by.

Set in Paris in 2016 and 1945, the play follows five generations of Jewish piano sellers. Marcelle Salomon Benhamou, the current matriarch, her husband Charles and their children, Daniel (26) and Elodie (28), are the contemporary members of the original Salomon family. Hers is a complicated and intricate family tree, full of twists and turns and bent and broken branches.

Jesse Kodama, Jared Troilo, Phyllis Kay, Peter Van Wagner, Tony Estrella

The play opens with house lights up as Patrick (Tony Estrella), the play’s narrator and Marcelle’s brother, addresses the audience. His eye contact and hands-in-trousers-pockets ease establish rapport and immediacy. “What is the beginning of a family?” he asks as he strolls across a set that will represent both 1945 and 2016. “And what,” he doesn’t ask but seems about to, “is its end?”

The calm is broken by a thrust into the Benhamou apartment, where Marcelle (the sublimely talented Amy Resnick) continues Patrick’s train of thought by explaining the family genealogy to a dumbfounded guest, Molly (Talia Sulla), a naïve and distant sort of cousin from America who is spending her junior year abroad in Paris. Molly (like the audience) tries to absorb the details but is thankful when Marcelle repeats the accounting.

Jumping to the present, Marcelle explains that Daniel is their religiously observant son. Daughter Elodie has been struggling with mental health issues and is, well, Elodie. Molly nods in mute agreement.

Just as Molly (and we) sort of get it, Charles (the always amazing Nael Nacer) and Daniel (Joshua Chessin-Yudin) burst through the door. Daniel, who teaches at a Jewish school and wears a kippah (Jewish head covering), has been attacked by a gang of antisemitic thugs. His face is bloody, but he is nonplussed. His parents are apoplectic.

“How many times have I begged you to wear a baseball cap?” Marcelle pleads, comparing his refusal to hide the kippah to painting a target on his back that screams, “Here I Am.” She urges her son to wake up to the danger he invites by advertising his religion in what is France’s current climate, where Holocaust deniers and Nazi sympathizers hold more sway. What she doesn’t do is entertain any thought of fleeing the country where her family of Ashkenazi ancestors has lived for centuries.

Carly Zien, Amy Resnick, Will Lyman, Joshua Chessin-Yudin

Charles’ reaction is different. He has seen this before and knows where it can lead. His North African Sephardic Jewish ancestors have been living in diaspora since they were forced to flee their home in Algeria in the 1960s. 

“It’s the suitcase or the coffin,” he says. He has reached his limit. He wants to go “home.” He wants to move to Israel. It may be unsafe there, too, but at least everyone is unsafe, not just Jews.

The family’s real firebrand and deliverer of Harmon’s celebrated monologues and dialectic analyses is Elodie (an electrifying Carly Zien, who steals every scene she’s in). While she may present as disheveled, her lines of logic and fact-based arguments are sources of encyclopedic knowledge and awe. She is not mentally ill so much as she is reacting in an unhinged way to a world that has come unhinged. (Her interaction with Molly at a bar is worth the price of admission and deserving of a standing ovation).

Harmon then quietly relocates us to 1944 (Andrew Boyce’s set accomplishes this seamlessly and with elegant artistry), where we meet Marcelle and Patrick’s great-grandparents, Irma and Adolphe Salomon (Peter Van Wagner and Phyllis Kay, both charming). They sit in their apartment towards the end of World War II, wondering what has happened to the rest of their family. Miraculously, they were able to remain in Paris during the war after the Nazis sent to deport them took pity on their age and left them alone. They have even managed to hold onto their piano store.

“What do people remember when you’re gone?” narrator Patrick asks the audience, pointing to his forebears. He then tells the story (Estrella really shines here) of how Irma would butter Adolphe’s toast first, and then use what was left to butter her own, in order to make it last longer and hide their dire circumstances from Adolphe. Those tiny, very human details are only one example of Harmon’s many playwriting virtuosities.

Writing cutting, funny, fast-paced and well-researched dialogue is another. The words fly at whiplash speed when the action shifts from 1944 back to 2016, where we pick up where we left off. Daniel and Molly are getting to know each other. (“How did you become religious?” she asks. “I prayed and I liked it, so I kept going,” he replies.)

Amy Resnick, Tony Estrella; photo by T Charles Erickson

Charles makes his case for leaving France before it’s too late (“I’m scared. Something is happening,” he confesses). Marcelle, quintessentially French and clinging to control, argues that Jews are never safe. Anywhere. At any time. Jew hatred, which in 2016, with the 2015 Charlie Hebdo and kosher deli shootings in Paris, the rise of the ultra-right in Europe and the election of Trump in America, has been regaining a foothold globally, is just the way it is.

“What is history but a bunch of stuff other people tell you to get over,” Patrick asks when later, with calm, cynicism and a touch of sadness, he gives a matter-of-fact account of the centuries of persecution suffered by Jews at the hands of the French, starting in 1096 with the Crusades.

And yet, France was the first country in Europe to offer Jews the full rights of citizenship in the hope that they would stop acting like a separate nation and assimilate, identifying more as French than as Jews. Making the case for staying put, he alludes to the fact that even the Holocaust couldn’t uproot the Salomon French family tree. Nor did it force them to convert (although he chose to marry a Catholic). They can withstand this comparative blip.

“Prayer for the French Republic” addresses many deeply troubling topics. Why are people obsessed with Israel? Is it appropriate for Jews to be scared? Is it irresponsible not to be? Now that Israel’s internal politics have so radically shifted, is even Israel still safe? Is it really “home?” Are we at the same tipping point where we were right before the Holocaust? At what point do we acknowledge that our world has hit an iceberg and, like it or not, our choices are to jump overboard or go down with the mother ship?

For this reviewer, the most telling moment was the play’s end. Would Harmon come down on the side of staying put in France or moving to Israel? As the cast belted out the French national anthem, “La Marseillaise” instead of Israel’s “Hatikva,” we had our answer.

For more information and to buy tickets, visit https://www.huntingtontheatre.org/

With “The Half-God of Rainfall,” A.R.T. Once Again Breaks New Production Ground

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Cast of “The Half-God of Rainfall,” at A.R.T. Credit: Lauren Miller

By Shelley A. Sackett

Will we ever become inured to the other-worldly team at American Repertory Theater and its ability to sprinkle fairy dust on Boston’s theater scene? With “The Half-God of Rainfall,” now in production through September 24, the answer is a resounding “No!”

It helps that Nigerian native Inua Ellams’s sinuous play is a masterful blending of unlikely ingredients: Greek mythology and Nigerian Yoruba spirituality, a war between mortals and gods, basketball, toxic patriarchy, white supremacy, female empowerment, and maternal love. Couple that with a script crafted as an epic poem, a stellar cast that works as a seamless ensemble, and breathtaking choreography, lighting, and sound designs, and well, you have all the makings for a night of unparalleled theatrical pageantry.

The scope and ambition of Ellams’s work is staggering.

It’s hard to describe the multilayered and, at times, opaque plot. Using basketball as both ground zero and allegory, Ellams creates a new myth about the half-god, half-mortal Demi (Mister Fitzgerald), born to human Nigerian high priestess Modúpé (Jennifer Mogbock) after she is brutally raped by the Greek titan god, Zeus (Michael Laurence).

Jennifer Mogbock and Michael Laurence

The genesis of the rape is even more chilling. As stand-ins for superpowers, Zeus and Sango (Jason Bowen), Greek and Yoruba gods of thunder, bet on a race. They agree to “boys-will-be-boys” terms as a settlement. The winner gets to take a member of the loser’s world as a prize.

When Zeus wins, he takes Modúpé as his deserved own, to do with as he pleases.

Demi grows up in a poor Nigerian village, gradually becoming aware of his extraordinary abilities to flood the land with the water from his tears and defy gravity with his basketball wizardry. He learns that basketball is more than a sport when he leaves Nigeria for the Golden State Warriors and superstardom. There, he earns the nickname “rainmaker” and rules the courts with his uncanny proficiency.

Yet all is not quiet on Mt. Olympus, where the gods (and especially Zeus) see all. One of the play’s lighter moments is when Nigerian American player Hakeem Olajuwon (Bowen) visits Demi and explains that all the great sports players are demi-gods but that Zeus forbade them from participating in mortal sports after Michael Jordan almost blew their cover by flying on the court. In defiance, Demi sets his sights on the Olympics, daring Zeus to descend from Olympus and stop him.

Examining sports culture and the way it informs and mirrors the best and worst of human behaviors is not all Ellams has up his sleeve, however. At 90 intermission-less minutes, he has ample time to address other meaty themes such as rape and its resultant PTSD, the burden of being a single mother, free will, female solidarity, Black feminism, and the #MeToo movement. And address them he does, with sensitivity, candor, and gusto.

Rather than hammering polemics, however, Ellams weaves important points into the fabric of the plotline by having his characters humanize and personalize them. “What teaches males to take what isn’t given?” Modúpé asks the river goddess Osún (Patrice Johnson Chevannes). Later, she describes how she was able to love her son Demi, despite the fact that his existence was borne of and is a reminder of such pain and trauma. “My body is my body. But my mind – I can’t control it. He (Zeus) took from me control of myself, but he gave me you,” she tells her son, implying that a mother’s love for and connection to her child supersedes all else.

Ellams pens another intriguing exchange between Zeus and Demi as they discuss who is better off, all-powerful gods or mere mortals. Surprisingly, an introspective Zeus shares that even though he fears he (and all gods) could become insignificant to mankind, he is even more threatened by the fact that humans have free will and can choose how to live. As the last free half-god, Demi has one foot in each world; he is half free but also half stuck in Zeus’ world of rules and obligation.

While the play presents challenges in terms of understanding the actors’ accents, hearing their voices and following the entwined and often confusing stories, the actors’ physicality and sheer force of production pyrotechnics provide ample balm. “Half-God” defies pigeon-holing. Part Magical Mystery Tour, part modern dance concert, part art installation, and all ingenious invention, “Half-God of Rainfall” is a must-see for anyone curious about how far the envelope of theater can be pushed. Once again, A.R.T. positions itself as the undisputed leader of the pack with another groundbreaking and thought-provoking production.

‘The Half-God of Rainfall’ – Written by Inua Ellams. Directed by Taibi Magar. Movement Direction by Orlando Pabotoy. Scenic Design by Riccardo Hernández. Lighting Design by Stacey Derosier. Sound Design and Music Composition by Mikaal Sulaiman. Projection Design by Tal Yarden. Orisha Movement Consulting/Choreography by Beatrice Capote. Costume Design by Linda Cho. Presented by American Repertory Theater in co-production with New York Theatre Workshop. At Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle St., Cambridge, through Sept. 24.

For tickets and information, go to: https://americanrepertorytheater.org/

Gloucester Stage ‘s Thought-Provoking ‘The Ding Dongs’ is a Theatrical Tour-de-Force

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Erica Steinhagen, Karl Gregory, and Nael Nacer in Gloucester Stage Company’s ‘The Ding Dongs’

By Shelley A. Sackett

We’ve all been there. That split second when we realize that all may not be as it seems, that we have misread a vital clue and that all is about to go south. The Ding Dongs, in production at Gloucester Stage through August 27, takes that moment and straps it to a steroid drip.

Don’t be put off by the title, as I almost was. (Is it a tribute to Hostess? To a bebop group? To the comedic wrestling duo?) The Ding Dongs will keep you on the edge of your seat for its entire 75 minutes from lights up to fade out and leave you dying to talk about it to anyone within earshot.

When is the last time theater had that kind of visceral effect?

The action starts with — what else — a couple ringing the doorbell of a suburban single-family home. Inside, the owner Redelmo (the always magnetic Neal Nacer), pauses and runs his hand over his shaved head as if some sixth sense warns him against answering the door.

From the get-go, there is something awry with Natalie (the mesmerizing Erica Steinhagen) and Joe (the superbly flexible Karl Gregory). Natalie is dressed like soccer mom Barbie and her husband Joe looks at home in his orange hooded windbreaker and fitted mod shirt. They present as any ordinary, if unfashionable, couple might, a little ditzy perhaps (another meaning of “ding-dong” is dingbat), but otherwise innocuous.

Natalie is the more forceful, immediately establishing that Joe grew up in Redelmo’s house and that they would love to come inside and take a peek at the old homestead. Joe is the more affable, taking his cues from Natalie and speaking only when she opens that door and invites him into the conversation.

Uncomfortable and increasingly suspicious, Redelmo tries to field their barrage of questions and reveal as little about himself as possible. Yet his politeness and graciousness are no defense to the couple’s verbal bombardment, and they steamroll right over the doomed deed holder’s threshold.

Once inside, all semblance of ordinariness vanishes. The couple launches their assault in earnest, cajoling, beseeching and threatening Redelmo. Natalie is equal parts pit bull prosecutor, evil enchantress and comical talk show host. Joe plays her foil, good cop to her sinister, slightly unhinged one.

The exchanges can be funny, but the overlay of menace and chaos erases any possibility of the audience feeling comic relief. These two are world-class black widow creeps, and Redelmo, with his social graces and timidity, is no match for them.

Soon, their unsettling stories turn more sinister, violent and threatening. Their past is revealed, including a dark chapter involving home invasions, violence, disruption and dislocation. The two are verbal quick-change artists, feigning innocence one minute, wielding machetes the next.

In this boxing match of words and wit, Redelmo is outperformed and outnumbered and no amount of fancy footwork is going to save him from the blows that will eventually corner and pummel him into submission.

Unexpectedly, the doorbell rings again and large boxes addressed to the couple begin arriving. At this point (and not until), Redelmo wakes up to the fact that these two are not visitors who can be reasoned with and will eventually get the message that he wants them to leave. These are ruthless, deranged home invaders who play by alien rules and carry baggage far more unsettling than whatever might be in the avalanche of boxes squatting in his living room.

Abruptly, his house has gone from a calm, suburban home to a cross between Pee Wee’s Playhouse and Regan’s bedroom in “The Exorcist,” and Redelmo reels at the heightened stakes.

Natalie continues, now claiming that the house really belongs to Joe because, after all, he has priority in the chain of deeds, having lived there well before Redelmo “owned” it. In fact, they argue, to an outside observer, it is Redelmo who would be considered the squatter, not them.

“The simplest explanation is always the best, even if it isn’t the truth,” she says. Like wolves closing in on common prey, Natalie and Joe encircle Redelmo, smelling his fear and tightening their grip.

And then, things get even twistier and more disorienting until by the play’s sudden end, neither the actors nor the audience is really sure who’s who and what’s what. Like a huge pot put on a flaming stove, this play simmers for a long time until you wonder if it will ever reach boiling point. When it finally does start to roil, however, there is no lid heavy or strong enough to keep it from boiling over, like poor Mickey’s cauldron in “Fantasia’s” famous “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.”

Playwright Brenda Withers has written a riveting, thought-provoking, timely play that receives a must-see, first-rate production under Rebecca Bradshaw’s crisp direction. Sound designer Julian Crocamo masterfully reflects the jerkiness of mood by subtly swinging from the sweetness of harmony to the menace of dissonance.

Setting the stage as a theater-in-the-square with four bays of seats gives the illusion of a boxing arena. It also allows Bradshaw and lighting designer M. Berry to take full advantage of a set that affords the audience a different perspective by slight shifts in position and luminosity. A few steps to the left or right and the focus can swing from an actor’s action to their reaction, giving the audience an entirely different perspective on the same situation.

With “The Ding Dongs,” Withers has created a sophisticated, multi-layered, complicated microcosm whose effects linger long after the play’s dramatic end. She subtitled her play, “What Is the Penalty in Portugal? a meditation on homeland security,” and she gives a clue as to her intention in writing it in a recent interview.

She had started thinking about land and property after reading an article about a skirmish in the Middle East. She thought about gentrification, the displacement of humans around the globe, and what makes a home a home.

She also thought about civility and how far we’ll let people get in order to maintain good manners. “What happens when you finally push back on someone and say, ‘These are actually my boundaries’ or ‘This is what’s making me uncomfortable.”’

This is not a “feel good” kind of play. Its laughs are funny but not funny. The manipulation, aggression and sense of helplessness are palpable and contagious. Those of us who think we may be inured and resigned to the realities of living in a macroworld where rules and truth are arbitrary will be further disheartened by this up close and personal micro-encounter with its nefarious day-to-day consequences.

It is, however, an important play with a timely and important message that should be seen and discussed. That Gloucester Stage’s production is an artistic bases loaded home run is icing on the cake.

‘The Ding Dongs’ — Written by Brenda Withers. Directed by Rebecca Bradshaw. Costume Design by Camilla Dely; Lighting Design by M. Berry; Sound Design by Julian Crocamo. Presented by Gloucester Stage, 267 East Main St., Gloucester, through August 27.

For tickets and information, go to: https://gloucesterstage.com/