When the Basic Premise Is a Lie: A Review of “After the Revolution”

 After the Revolution

Written by Amy Herzog

Directed by Susanna Frazer

Presented by Morningside Players Theater Co. at The Morningside Players Theater Space

100 LaSalle Street, Manhattan, NYC

October 17-November 3, 2024

Natalie Pernick as Emma, Matthew Cubillos as Miguel in After the Revolution. Photo by Bridget Leicester.

Family secrets, protecting the innocent, taking the wrap: when facts come to light, when push comes to shove, what measure do ethics, morals, standards, and loyalty really have? What's the tipping point between burying truth and outright betrayal?

Director Susana Frazer gifted the packed house an energetically paced, thoughtfully staged production of After the Revolution, bringing together a tight talented ensemble of seasoned actors, The Morningside Players. All of the nuances and subtleties of this well-crafted, mostly autobiographical play by Amy Herzog were brought to the surface, educating and illuminating the responsive audience. The play, and its stellar performances, were charged with political memory and the intricacies used in mastering and maneuvering family relationships.

The timing couldn’t be better: a fresh graduate from law school, Emma Joseph (Natalie Pernick) is riding high. Yet the very celebration of her academic endeavors is tainted by some soon-to-be-made public history about her dearly departed communist grandpa, Joe Joseph, who holds an amazing prescience for a deceased character.

George Pappas and Mark Hofmaier in After the Revolution.  
Photo by Bridget Leicester.

Yes, he valiantly refused to name names in the Red Scare McCarthy era, but a new text is soon to be published divulging that Grandpa was a spy for the Russian government. This will put Emma in an extremely compromised corner as she, along with boyfriend Miguel (Matthew Cubillos), has just begun to get her activist organization—and an increasingly flush fund supporting its endeavors, named in memory of Joe Joseph—off the ground. Together they are working on expanded efforts to free political activist/ journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal from his death sentence.

Daddy, Ben Joseph (George Pappas), Uncle Leo (Mark Hofmaier), and Grandma Vera (Cecilia Riddett), Grandpa Joseph's second wife, have conspired all of these years—at Ben's request— to allow Emma's admiration for Joe Joseph to remain untarnished. She’s blissfully and completely unaware of this information.

Blacklisted and persecuted during the McCarthy Era, Joe Joseph did not name names, but now history is rearing its ugly head, and despite Ben Joseph's best efforts, the time has come to tell Emma the truth, before it makes a mess of her new future. Poor Ben has to face the music, and when he finally tells Emma, she's aghast. Of course, she thinks her dad should have told her some time ago that Grandpa Joe, who she has always so highly revered, was tried for espionage. After all, she's the last to know: everyone in the family has known except Emma—even her sister, Jess (Siobhan Regan), a recovering addict on the mend.

The impact of Ben’s confession forces his estrangement from his daughter, opens a serious rift between Emma and Miguel, and further dramatizes family dynamics.

As Emma. Natalie Pernick convinced the rapt audience that she is trapped in a cage of ethical dilemma, hindered and hog-washed by not being in on the big family secret. Pernick plays hurt, confused, betrayed, and eventually Daddy's girl, with aplomb. The Joseph family’s generational Marxist ideology has been proudly upheld—up till now—and worn like a badge of honor.

Susan Peters and Natalie Pernick in After the Revolution. Photo by Bridget Leicester.

Ben Joseph (George Pappas) pays a dear price for parent error in his effort to protect her. Expressing this nightmare for Ben, her doting Dad, George Pappas, delivers a plum performance, putting an anxiety-ridden spin on each layer of parental woe that is peeled away in real time. We feel his suffering at his daughter's stonewalling. We share with him the pain and joy of parenthood.

Even old wealthy family friend Morty (Alex Dmitriev) is ready, willing, and enthusiastically eager to break out the checkbook and maybe score a date with Vera. Dmitriev embodies Morty with wit and the voice of reason, always in the moment.

Riddett handily embodies Vera, loyal to her dead husband beyond the grave that separates them. Her eccentricities, her meddling habits, her controlling tone all seem second nature to her crafting of the character, imbuing her with an acerbic naughtiness. The last scene finds her chastising Emma for “naming her grandfather” as Emma dis-involves herself with the activist organization she birthed, unable to balance its continuance under her leadership with “the ethics of spying.”

 Alex Dmitriev as Morty in After the Revolution. Photo by Bridget Leicester.

Hofmaier simply IS Leo, a family man who tries to get it all right but isn’t the torch carrier of his family’s political Marxist ideology. Hofmaier plays confused yet supportive as he watches brother Ben struggle.

As Ben’s second wife Mel (Susan Peters), Peters is warm, step-motherly, and midwestern, evoking a compassionate yet often discounted importance to her family amidst their political pride and allegiance to their history. Her scene with reticent Emma is memorable as she encourages Emma to “follow your heart.”

As Miguel, Cubillos renders a believable real man: in love with Emma and his cause of freeing political activist Mumia Abu-Jamal. He plays his strength and principles as he chooses to give the relationship a break, conflicted but firm in the importance of his civil rights cause.

Siobhan Regan’s Jess is spot-on. Herzog gave this character an underbelly and a contrasting luminosity, and Regan’s “sister with a silver lining” is wonderful to watch.

Tingwei Lin, meanwhile, loans atmosphere with his portrayal of the Server.

This was a very satisfying evening of theatre. At intermission I was told that the Morningside Heights theatre is located in a neighborhood that was an old hippie area, known during its heyday as a home to many a communist. Now, I was told, the neighborhood has shifted and changed, housing multiple generations of various ethnic backgrounds “not understanding each other.” I listened to this older audience member thinking that this is presently the way of the world.

-Yvonne Tutelli