By Dale King
The “play-within-a-play” device has worked pretty well over the years. Even William Shakespeare used it to his advantage.
Playwright James Sherman employs this literary mechanism deftly in his play, The God of Isaac, now at the Broward Stage Door Theater in Coral Springs.
The Isaac of this show is not Isaac, son of Abraham and Sarah, and father of Jacob and Esau, as described in Genesis. No, it is a young Chicago-area journalist named Isaac Adams (Patrick Wilkinson) who is trying to come to grips with his “Jewishness” after basically ignoring it since making his bar mitzvah.
Wilkinson acts as both narrator and performer, focusing the audience’s attention on the story while guiding them through the religious dearth that has muddied his life to date. It is a confident performance that rarely strays from the subject, even as Isaac deals with a series of interruptions from his meddlesome but loving mother, portrayed with much maternal panache by Phyllis Spear, who is sitting in the front row with the audience.
The play is set in 1977, when the American Nazi Party planned to march through the streets of Skokie, Ill, an area heavily populated with Holocaust survivors. That impending event seems to rev up Isaac’s desire to learn about his heritage after years of neglect. Author Sherman sets Isaac’s journey for knowledge against a backdrop of comic characters, serious relationships, Isaac’s own struggling marriage and the constant skirmishes with mom.
The production is unique. Only two actors — Wilkinson and Spear — have specific roles. The other two dozen characterizations are spread among a talented quartet of players who must spend the play scampering about backstage, making sure they return to the front in the proper costume. There’s plenty of potential for disaster, but they manage to make it work without a hitch.
The show takes place at center stage, with a large doorway behind where some of the actors make their entrances and exits. Others show up on risers to the left and right sides of the stage. When the spotlight goes on, they launch into their performances. Both risers are backed by massive Torah scrolls; Stage Door Scenic did a great job making them seem so realistic.
When we first see Isaac, he is sitting out front. For a worrisome moment, the audience wonders if the play has actually begun, since Wilkinson seems so nonchalant and uninvolved.
But when his journey begins in earnest, he gets pretty serious, though he still drops the occasional story or one-liner.
The actor playing Isaac seems to be a cross between Greg Kinnear and Tom Bergeron. Perhaps the two characters most important to him — other than his “mother,” of course — are former girlfriend, Chaya, a Jewish girl played by Rebeca Diaz, and his wife, Shelley, a Gentile and one of the characters played by Kelli Mohrbacher. Chaya keeps showing up reciting her letters to Isaac as her life proceeds through marriage and divorce. Shelley is a restless spirit uninterested at first in Isaac’s quest, then totally turned off by it.
Playwright Sherman offers an effective dramatic function to hammer home some salient points. He presents mini-scenes from famous films, revised to reflect a Jewish point of view while sticking to the format of the original film.
So it is that Marlon Brando (Tom Bengston) spouts Jewishness in his notable scene from On the Waterfront. Dorothy (Diaz again) and her friends are off to see the Wizard in the Oz drama that takes a Jewish turn along the yellow brick road. Henry Fonda (Christian Vandepas) gives a different direction to his great scene from Grapes of Wrath. But perhaps the top parody goes to Bengston, Mohrbacher and Vandepas, who really redraw My Fair Lady, with Eliza Doolittle trying to master a Germanic-sounding language – and Professor Higgins and Colonel Pickering finally celebrating the fact that “by George, I think she’s got it.”
Among cast members, Spear is a seasoned pro who can deliver the goods from the stage or audience. Bengston, Diaz, Mohrbacher and Vandepas are top-drawer, well suited to their many roles.
Director Dan Kelley does yeoman duty keeping the action from spilling too far off the stage. The triple tableaux set is a bit of genius.
Lighting, and the timing of the lighting, is exceptionally important, and lighting designer Ardean Landhuis gets it all right. Costumer Colleen O’Connell has crafted some great get-ups, particularly for the parodies.
The play is wonderfully entertaining, though a few segments are a bit sad. Overall, though, it’s a howl.
The God of Isaac is playing through April 20 at the Broward Stage Door Theater, 8036 W. Sample Road, Coral Springs. For tickets, call 954-344-7765.