Review: "Observant" Engages and Challenges the Traumatic, Local and Global

Observant

Written by Pamela Weiler Grayson

Directed by Shellen Lubin

Presented by Red Lyric Productions in association with Adam Weinstock and Emerging Artists Theatre at Chain Theatre

312 West 36th St., Floors 3 and 4, Manhattan, NYC

September 12-28, 2024

L to R: Rebecca Hoodwin, Melissa Wolff, Arielle Beth Klein, Yair Ben-Dor, Arielle Flax, Fady Demian. Photo by Dallas Phelps, NYC.

In Pamela Weiler Grayson’s timely and excellent new play, Observant, we spend shabbes (or shabbat in Hebrew, as the distinction is properly outlined during the next three scenes) in Scarsdale. In this seemingly bucolic New York village, three generations of a family – and the community and world writ large – will face the worst of what this (and last) century can issue against Jewish Americans, even in the suburbs. And yet, in order to confront the world without, this family must confront that which lies within and between the generations. Over the course of this holiday with the Gordons, we come to understand, much like the characters on stage, that tikkun olam – the repairing of a broken world – begins at home.

The three generations of Gordon women are drawn together this weekend for the serendipitous joint celebration of the Jewish sabbath and a 60th birthday celebration for the middle matriarch, Amy (Melissa Wolff). Her younger and less traditionally observant daughter Zoe (Arielle Flax) is present, as is older and recently Modern Orthodox daughter Sarah (Arielle Beth Klein), as well as their respective partners, Farrok (Fady Demian) and Josh (Yair Ben-Dor). The matriarch, Nancy (Rebecca Hoodwin), will arrive later, under tragic circumstances. Though Jewishness means something different to each of these women, they are nonetheless united by their resolve, their love, and their faith.

Rebecca Hoodwin and Melissa Wolff. Photo by Dallas Phelps, NYC.

Despite the deadly serious content and theme of Grayson’s play, the sharp script is also blisteringly funny at times, replete with the dry incisive wit so deeply characteristic of the Jewish American experience. The most difficult parts of the play are cut through with this particular brand of dark humor’s uncanny power to diagnose, play, underscore, cut through all of the bullshit, and reconcile. The best lines are saved for Sarah and Nancy, and both Klein and Hoodwin deliver the goods pitch-perfectly, drawing a deserving laugh from an audience otherwise on edge. This humorous undercurrent speaks to the strong sensibility and nuance which guides Grayson’s script; there is room for all of the complexity and complication and joy and sorrow of life in these words and in these collectively fine performances.

The scene opens in Amy’s living room, where we will remain for the duration of the play, dominated by a garish (albeit comforting) Christmas tree, Christmas music, and a glass of red wine. Tensions are already in play as the annual Christmas is out early this year – and the holiday’s mere presence poses a direct challenge to the more observant Sarah. Yet the scene nonetheless looks conformingly like a picture of an American home during the holiday season, and serves as a potentially stabilizing backdrop in stark contrast to the otherwise tumultuous scenes of the next three shabbes with the Gordons. The other dominant feature remains unseen offstage – a television tuned to CNN, the only source of news, feeding and allaying the characters’ and the audience’s anxieties alike, a timely reminder of our own push-and-pull, love-and-hate relationship with the necessity for news in a post-9/11 world.

L to R: Yair Ben-Dor, Arielle Beth Klein, Fady Demian, Arielle Flax, Rebecca Hoodwin, Melissa Wolff. Photo by Dallas Phelps, NYC.

Throughout the runtime, the set remains the same; it is the characters that change. The front door is mid-auditorium as the action of the play extends to those of us in our seats – we, too, cannot escape the terror of the day, but we, too, are invited into the big tent of the Gordon household. We audience members sit to dinner with this family. The Christmas tree of the first act is later supplemented, at first by the candlelight of the shabbes candles, and then by the braided taper of the havdalah candle lit to mark the end of the sabbath. This hybrid set mirrors our hybrid characters – three women undeniably all Jewish in their own way, who all make room for each other, and whose love and hospitality grows outward. Farrouk, a secular Muslim and unflinching source of stability for this family throughout the crisis, ultimately finds belonging at the shabbes table; one of many symbols of a deeply honest look at hybrid American Jewishness which does indeed include Christmas trees and Orthodox Jews and Muslims.

The play closes as shabbes closes; we, like the characters, hoping to carry the sweetness of the havdalah spice box with us in the week ahead, as well as the months and years to come – the call to tikkun olam and the desire to find community and healing in a difficult world taken up with broken hearts and open arms.

-Noah Simon Jampol