Review: The Last Night of Ballyhoo at SecondStory Repertory
Exclusive review by Miryam Gordon
Do you ever want to pull for the Little Engine That Could? Let’s hear it for the little guy! Well, you can guess that’s how SecondStory Repertory feels all the way out there in Redmond Towne Center when they’re presenting great theater and people don’t hear about it. The current production, The Last Night of Ballyhoo, is by the same guy who wrote Driving Miss Daisy, Alfred Uhry. Both focus on the distinctive Southern Jewish culture of his family.
First of all, it’s a masterful play, with all kinds of layers and subtleties, some layers which non-Jews might miss. It’s also a masterful production. Opening night started off a little shaky and slow, but that will surely disappear in subsequent performances. The set, another exquisite piece by Dan Schuy (getting to see more of his work is to appreciate exacting perfection), is a basic living room and stairs, so easy to see as lived in. The costumes by Pete Rush are also terrific and representative of the upper middle class in 1939 Atlanta, Georgia. Rob Falk’s simple lighting is easy on the eyes, subtly effective. Sound designer Danny Miller chooses period-specific music reflecting on themes in the play. Susanna Burney directs with a firm grip on a very well-cast show.
Everyone in the play is of Jewish descent, though most of them spend a lot of time acting very much like their Lutheran neighbors. Several members of an extended family have ended up living together, each a fragment of other wholes. Boo Levy and her daughter, Lala, live with Boo’s brother, Adolf Freitag, joined with Boo’s sister-in-law, Reba Freitag and Reba’s daughter, Sunny. Boo and Reba have both lost their husbands. Adolf has stepped in to take care of them, and the family bedding business.
Adolf brings a new man to work for him who happens to be a New York Jew. Joe Farkas is taken aback by the lack of Jewish knowledge or understanding of the family, where the living room contains a huge Christmas tree, complete with 5-pointed star. He’s more taken aback by conversation about the “other” Jews who are “other” just because they come from the Polish side of the river, rather than the German side – in Europe, not in Georgia! The “other” Jews have probably emigrated more recently than 150 years ago, and carry with them more remnants of their European background. Joe’s family is from Russia and Poland, so he realizes that they must consider him “other” as well.
Boo and Reba even tell Sunny that they can tell where someone Jewish is from “just by looking at them.” Clearly an outrageous generalization, which Sunny points out. Sunny is a young, college-attending woman, intelligent and aware of her family’s failings. She doesn’t really think she’s one of them, but her aloofness is only skin-deep. Joe eventually makes her understand that she hasn’t moved very far away from how she was raised.
The plot is very, very light and breezy, so it’s mostly a very, very funny play. The undertones take a while to surface. Ellen Dessler’s Lala flounces around screeching and arguing with her family as the awkward and socially inept daughter, jealous of her cousin’s grace. Gretchen Douma is the indomitable Boo, loud, bossy, caustic, and a general pain in the butt. Robert Bogue’s Adolf mostly stays out of the way, letting the women rule the roost, but occasionally throwing some good zingers in. Stephanie McBain is the ditzy Reba, a sweet, addled woman who just doesn’t get it.
It’s almost Christmas and they are focused on an annual gathering called Ballyhoo, which is only for “their” kind of rich Jews, and which ends in a great ball on Christmas Eve. Lala is, easy to guess, pining for a date, and a new dress. Sunny doesn’t care, but really does. Joe (Eric Riedmann) is immediately enamored of Sunny (Shanna Allman), and asks her to go with him, leaving Lala still without that all important date. Lala is trying to find out if a young man coming to town, from the “right” family, Peachy Weil (Danny Miller), will actually take her to the dance.
This looks so much like a typical drawing room comedy that it’s hard to remember that in 1939, Hitler was beginning to establish the death camps and hauling thousands of Jews from their homes to their deaths. Certainly, this family isn’t aware of it. It’s not through lack of news. It’s a willful ignoring of far-away unpleasantness that has nothing to do with them. Uhry has placed that frothy drawing room comedy squarely on top of a most serious play.
Every one of the main characters has got his/her character locked. Dessler is funny, and also affecting when she cries about her looks and her voice, which are so Jewish and that means ugly. McBain has some wonderfully ditzy moments. Douma does a big, bad pushy Mama. Bogue has impeccable comic timing, and occasionally scene-steals with glee. Riedmann and Allman together have great chemistry and each is sweet and deep. They are a pleasure to watch. Danny Miller, who enters only at the end of the play, has a thankless task, playing the overbearing and “born to the Jewish manor” cad, and handles that well.
Redmond isn’t that far from Seattle, just as West Seattle (where ArtsWest is toiling away without as much recognition as it deserves) isn’t that far from Capitol Hill/downtown, either. Take a nice drive over the lake, just past Microsoft, and meet a funny family. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, maybe you’ll have a bite. The Last Night of Ballyhoo plays Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through March 28. For more information, visit www.secondstoryrep.org.
– Miryam Gordon
Dachau, The first concentration camp, was established in 1933, but it was not until 1941, when the plans were made to invade the soviet union, that the systematic extermination of the jews began.