Chaz Mena and Avi Hoffman in The Quarrel.
By Hap Erstein
Some theater reaches for spectacle, but what the theater does best is traffic in dialogue and ideas.
Words and the emotions behind them are in the spotlight in a brief, intermissionless play at GableStage, The Quarrel, by David Brandes and Joseph Telushkin, which chronicles a chance reunion of two men who were childhood friends.
In 1948, in Montreal’s Mount Royal Park, published poet Chaim Kovler (Chaz Mena), in town for a public reading, sees Rabbi Hersh Rasseyner (Avi Hoffman) preparing to pray, and they warily embrace one another. As they catch each other up on events, they consider how their lives have spun in different directions, separated by the brutality of the Holocaust, which had a profound, opposite effect on their commitment to Judaism.
Both lost their families in the death camps, which led Kovler to a secular life and lack of faith, while Rasseyner grew even more devout. As they circle each other, both literally and verbally, they peel away layers, unraveling their pasts and the central perceived betrayal that left a gulf between them.
Fortunately, The Quarrel is more about the limits and resilience of friendship than the value of religion, and neither man is seen as wrong or right. The densely bearded Hoffman gives a performance of delicacy and authenticity, but the revelation is Mena, whose inflections and manner are on target, though more of a personal stretch. Artistic director Joseph Adler may have had a distinct effect on his performers, but the results are a simple, deft staging that is powerful, but seemingly effortless.
THE QUARREL, GableStage at the Biltmore Hotel, 1200 Anastasia Ave., Coral Gables. Continuing through May 23. Tickets: $37.50-$42.50. Call: (305) 445-1119.
It is called New Theatre, and its main focus is on developing and presenting new scripts, but lately, some of this Coral Gables company’s most effective efforts have been with such established, even classic, plays as Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie and Peter Shaffer’s Equus.
Nicky Silver’s Raised in Captivity first met audiences in 1995, and is probably too quirky to withstand comparison with those other two works, but it captures a handful of neurotic lives with a knowing comic touch and is never less than entertaining, even when its tone shifts confound some of the New Theatre cast.
At the center of Silver’s theatrical maelstrom is a pair of distant twins, unsuccessful writer Sebastian (an increasingly unhinged John Mazzelli, who bears a resemblance to Silver) and his similarly unstable sister Bernadette (comically high-strung Katherine Amadeo), married to a dentist who would rather be painting. Grief, Silver-style, strikes before the play begins when the twins’ mother is killed by a errant shower head. Add to the mix a convicted murderer (Lorenzo D. Gutierrez III) on whom Sebastian is fixated and Sebastian’s patient-but-only-to-a-point psychologist (Barbara Sloan, who flips from silent to motor-mouthed), and you have the ingredients for an odd comic stew.
Audiences are advised to take momentary pleasures from Raised in Captivity when they can, for those waiting for the play to add up to much will wait in vain. Nor is it clear from the direction by Ricky J. Martinez how we are to take the darker, more naturalistic second act, but face value does not seem a viable option. Still, those willing to strap themselves in for the ride will be rewarded with numerous comic jolts and some head-scratching twists.
RAISED IN CAPTIVITY, New Theatre, 4120 Laguna St., Coral Gables. Continuing through Sunday. Tickets: $35-$40. Call: (305) 443-5909.