There are many ways to be a bad Jew. You could sneak a cookie during Passover. You could dishonor your grandfather by going on a skiing trip as he takes to his deathbed. Or you could propose to your shiksa girlfriend, with a gold charm that grandpa risked his life to retain during the Holocaust.
In fact, a character in Joshua Harmon’s corrosive, and corrosively funny, play — bluntly titled Bad Jews — does all of the above. And yet, he is only one of several reprehensible souls encountered in the rapier-sharp, on-target production at GableStage in Coral Gables.
Perhaps the most intriguing character — or maybe it is the full-throttle performance of Natalia Coego that leaves that impression — is Diana Feygenbaum, a Vassar student who so fervently clings to her Jewish heritage that she has adopted the more ethnic moniker of Daphna and, after college, expects to move and adopt Israel as her homeland.
As Bad Jews begins, her grandfather’s funeral has just occurred and she is in the Upper West Side studio apartment of her more affluent cousins, Jonah and Liam Haber. Daphna presses Jonah into an alliance over ownership of a particular piece of Poppy’s jewelry that she wants for its personal and religious significance. Jonah (doughy Mark Della Ventura) can barely look up from his video game, no doubt a frequent ploy of his, a way to avoid confrontation by clinging to indifference.
Daphna, on the other hand, is growing increasingly agitated, anticipating the arrival of Jonah’s older brother Liam (glib, hot-headed David Rosenberg), who cannot be in the same room with her without breaking into a nasty verbal skirmish. For as much as she has embraced Judaism, Liam denies it, embarrassed by its cultural rituals and artifacts. Of course, he will make an exception of his grandfather’s Chai medallion, which he hope to bestow on Melody (sweet, low-key Lexi Langs), the latest in a string of non-Jewish girlfriends, the one he has in tow from ski trip to shiva, to whom he intends to get engaged.
Jonah and Melody serve definite purposes in Harmon’s dysfunctional extended family play, but it is the acid-tinged arguments of values, faith and life choices between Daphna and Liam which are the main event of Bad Jews.
Both characters are highly articulate and resolutely assured, a fine formula for the blood sport of dorm room debate.
Joseph Adler paces and stages the play for maximum audience involvement and impact, but his main skill in evidence here is his unerring ability to discover and cast new talent. Enough cannot be said of Coego, who gives a force-of-nature performance as Daphna, epitomized perhaps by her mushroom cloud head of hair. She heaves anger at everyone in her path, even those clearly not up to her talent for jousting. But Daphna saves her most incendiary barbs for Liam, and Coego shows the bitterness the character feels, a grudge match that has been a long time coming.
Rosenberg too bristles with intelligence and a confidence that Liam’s positions are the only rational conclusions. To paraphrase the Levy’s rye bread ad, you don’t have to be Jewish to recognize antagonists like Daphna and Liam from your own life.
As the play’s only non-Jew, Langs portrays a character in over her head, a pawn who refuses to be pulled down to their level. She also delivers a quite funny rendition of Gershwin’s “Summertime” when Daphna goads her into singing. Della Ventura is silently reactive for much of the play, though he has the final (non-verbal) word on honoring his late grandfather.
Bad Jews has put Harmon on the theatrical map and his smart vicious humor suggests we will be hearing a lot more from him in the future. So you might as well treat yourself to a Chanukah present of tickets to this visceral production, a fine example of why GableStage is one of the region’s most consistently challenging and satisfying stage companies.
BAD JEWS, GableStage, 1200 Anastasia Ave., Coral Gables. Continuing through Sunday, Dec. 21. Tickets: $50-$55. Call: (305) 445-1119.