Playwright: Alan Gross. At: Goodman Owen Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn . Phone: 312-443-3800; $10-$40
Runs through: Nov. 29
If High Holidays is indeed autobiographical ( as the program claims ) , then playwright Alan Gross deserves our deepest pity. The Jewish family in this piece ( set in 1963 ) is so over-the-top in its abrasive, abusive ways that Gross' drama feels like anti-Semitic propaganda designed to show how horribly unfit Jews are as parents.
The piece centers on Billy Roman ( Max Zuppa ) , who—for reasons never adequately plumbed—seems pathologically unable to prepare for his pending bar mitzvah. This infuriates his alternately cruel and crazed parents. His father, Nate ( Keith Kupferer, an actor who deserves far better than this ) , calls the kid a "subnormal," while his mother, Esther ( Rengin Altay ) , screeches after him with a butcher knife. In language salted with Hebrew and Yiddish, Nate and Esther become two of the most hateful, dysfunctional parents this side of a Grimm's fairy tale.
As Nate tries to bully Billy into learning his Torah portion for the bar mitzvah, High Holidays grows downright puzzling. Billy whines that he can't memorize words he doesn't understand, while is mother clucks and fusses and his father rants about his "umbleck" ( loser ) son. But Gross never really explains why Billy has almost a physical aversion to studying; all we get is a puzzling portrait of a boy who prefers Native American lore to Judaism.
Into this tiresome mix comes older brother Rob ( Ian Paul Custer ) , home from college with a pocket full of grass and a head full of plans to light out for California and become a folk singer. Rob's career aspirations are met with about the same level of enthusiasm you'd expect had he announced he was going into the priesthood, and it's his introduction into the family dynamic that sets the stage for roughly an hour's worth of screaming across the Roman dinner table.
Director Steven Robman keeps the argumentative pitch at headache-inducing levels. The sole respite comes with an almost touching backyard scene of brotherly love, as Rob lights up and shares a smoke with young Billy.
The primary conflict Gross seems to want to illustrate lies between Nate and Esther's values and those of their children. To the parents, raised in the great Depression, the suburban lifestyle represented by Iroquois ( read: Skokie ) Illinois is the American Dream made tangible. But to the Gross children, Iroquois is a prison of conformity and hollow values. Bar mitzvahs seem to represent the pinnacle of hollowness, according to Robbie, who delivers a long speech describing just how soulless his own ceremony was.
But in Gross' dialogue, a moving story of an intergenerational battlefield is buried under characters so shockingly dislikable the production becomes a chore. What should be a provocative emotional portrait of lives on the cusp of a decade about to explode becomes an exercise in ugly tedium.
