Imagining Madoff

Man cannot be evil in a vacuum. Although the Bernie Madoff envisaged by Deborah Margolin in her unmistakably titled Imagining Madoff is sufficiently intriguing to warrant a one-man production, the show boasts all of three characters. The play’s abstract construction dilutes the viewer’s terrifying stare into the fantasia of a noted criminal’s mind, yet it provides the necessary context to demonstrate that, pathology aside, what made Madoff vile is the hurt he knowingly caused his unsuspecting clients and disgraced colleagues. Accordingly, the Jewish Ensemble Theatre’s Midwest premiere, directed by Yolanda Fleischer, features a haunting turn by B.J. Love as the real-life Ponzi-scheming villain, but the completeness of its success is in extending its reach to show the ease of his ice-cold deception at work.

The coup of the production is Love’s gripping monologues as an incarcerated Bernie, who shrugs off his own admitted soft-spoken demeanor and candidly recounts and marvels at his treachery to an unseen biographer. The actor’s matter-of-fact relationship to the material makes for a startling viewer experience, in which this man figuratively pulls back his face to reveal the cunning shark-like monster beneath. Despite some tender musing on his wife’s pleasure at being surrounded by nice things, Margolin’s Bernie created an empire of fraud less for the end than the means, the incredible high of taking and taking — indeed, of having money seemingly thrust at him — and getting away with it. The character’s twisted moral code and tendency to see sadness as some kind of personal affront are dually abhorrent and riveting; with Margolin’s text and Love’s terrific work, it’s easy and harrowing to imagine this Madoff.

Click to read more ...

The Whipping Man

At the close of the Civil War, citizens of the ravaged South were in upheaval: depending on their skin color, either their former wealth and lifestyle was toppled, or they faced an exciting but daunting new world of rights and responsibilities. Playwright Matthew Lopez imagines a singular fallout in The Whipping Man, a co-production of Jewish Ensemble Theatre and Plowshares Theatre. Directed by Gary Anderson, artistic director of the latter company, this production plunges into the social issues surrounding it, but hits home with the palpable anguish of its magnificently portrayed personal stakes.

On the heels of the Confederate surrender in April 1965, rebel officer Caleb (Rusty Mewha) returns wounded to his home, where newly emancipated slave Simon (Council Cargle) recognizes the severity of his former master’s gangrene and rightly insists on amputation. The elephant in the room — this white-hot power shift among privileged Caleb, nurturing Simon, and the wild-card return of former slave John (Scott Norman) — is magnified in the face of a medical emergency (and subsequent convalescence) that leaves Caleb in no position to protest. After the events of the first turbulent night, the physical squeamishness lets up, allowing an unrelenting but handily earned emotional discomfort to take its place. No ramification is left unexamined, from the freed men’s motives for staying in the house of their oppression, to the hypocrisy of their shared Jewish faith being passed down by mandate from owner to slave, to the fallacy of Caleb’s hollow justification that — compared with the horrors of plantation work — his family treated their slaves with fondness and fairness. Much is made of John’s opportunistic looting of the abandoned homes surrounding them, an exorbitant expression of his freedom that previously would have gotten him sent to the titular whipping man; at another extreme, Simon’s caretaking of Caleb is at once a triumph of human compassion and an open question without an easy answer.

Click to read more ...

The Model Apartment

Hufano tears up 'The Model Apartment', reproduced with permission from EncoreMichigan.com.

Playwright Donald Margulies may have written The Model Apartment as a dark comedy, but for the most part, director Lavinia Moyer Hart stops at "dark." Although the production at The Jewish Ensemble Theatre is twisted into absurdity, and objectively funny moments come and go, Hart doesn't play the scene for laughs, instead diving headlong into the characters and relationships of one nuclear family freshly and repeatedly ravaged by its history. Given a plot so intense it practically gasps for levity, the choice is indeed risky; it's also more than justified in this incendiary production, cemented by a must-see lead performance.

Max (Tom Mahard) and Lola (Trudy Mason) have sped from New York to Florida, eager to begin their retirement. However, their arrival is so early, they're waylaid in the model unit of the complex until their new-construction residence is completed. The production team has fun with the latest in 1988 retirement living: Beyond the busy tropical patterns, pastel-speckled flooring and bamboo blinds of the studio apartment, set designer Sarah Tanner's distinctly Floridian room even has a Florida room. Bland model-home accoutrements and ocean-inspired kitsch (properties by Diane Ulseth) are bonded to the furniture, enhancing the off-putting feel of a living space void of working appliances or any sign of life. Jon Weaver's sound design anticipates the trouble-free good life with placidly warm Nat King Cole tunes and uses ambient noises to expand on what's visible. Designer Donald Fox toys with automated lighting and lends both visibility and tone to the several lights-off scenes of Max and Lola's long night.

Click to read more ...

New Jerusalem: The Interrogation of Baruch De Spinoza at Talmud Torah Congregation: Amsterdam, July 27, 1656

What happens when a playwright known for his distinctive, absurd flavor of comedy sets his sights on drama? If David Ives is any indication, it unleashes torrents of long-suppressed brilliant philosophical discourse, as evidenced by his New Jerusalem: The Interrogation of Baruch de Spinoza at Talmud Torah Congregation: Amsterdam, July 27, 1656. The show's Midwest premiere at the Jewish Ensemble Theatre, directed by David J. Magidson, is a seriously smart piece of historical fiction raising questions of philosophy, ethics, and religion that formed the basis of a pre-Enlightenment ethos.

The facts are these: on the date in question, Baruch de Spinoza was summoned to Talmud Torah Congregation in Amsterdam, where he had until recently been studying to become a rabbi; the same day, a cherem was issued against him, effectively excommunicating him and severing all ties to his faith and people. What remain unknown, and what Ives ventures to imagine, are the specifics of what was said and done that led to such a harsh and irreversible sentence. At the center of the controversy, young upstart Baruch (Mitchell Koory) is luminous with conviction, a man of supreme intellect who meets his spiritual needs by using science and logic to merge the God he loves with the world he understands. Wrongly accused of atheism, Baruch has actually conceived of a divinity that has strengthened rather than diminished his faith; the delight in his discovery is so powerful, in fact, he is compelled to disseminate the ideology as a better way to worship. His religious superiors are troubled that these ideas may directly contradict the Jewish Articles of Faith, and local governmental authorities take offense that he has discussed his philosophies with Christians, violating the rules under which Jews and Christians have agreed to coexist in Holland (where Jews have come to flee the Spanish Inquisition). The play’s two acts begin like a college-level discussion of philosophy, but veer into a kind of informal trial presided over by both church and state. Yet the production succeeds in emphasizing discourse rather than contentiousness — instead of resorting to defensiveness, Koory’s performance is purely enthusiastic, keen on debate and reason rather than self-preservation.

Click to read more ...

Modern Orthodox

The premise of Daniel Goldfarb's Modern Orthodox is as outlandish as a sitcom plot: passing acquaintance makes himself a sudden fixture in our heroes' lives, much to their consternation. Yet beneath the heightened plot there is additional promise for growth, in the concept of people whose take on their shared religion makes them almost contentiously opposed before they start learning from each other. In the current production at Jewish Ensemble Theatre, director Aaron Moore looks beyond situation to character for the basis of his humor, and the result is a collection of comic performances so fine, they excuse whatever minor discord the perspective raises against the script.

The play begins with a disjointed first meeting between Ben Jacobson (Scott Crownover) and Hershel Klein (Aral Gribble). The latter's business is diamonds; the former is ready to pop the question to his girlfriend of six years, Hannah Ziggelstein (Christina L. Flynn). To group both men under the descriptor "Jewish" is to lump Kraft Singles and sushi together as "food" — their relationship with Judaism could not be more different. Although costume designer Cal Schwartz accents his yarmulke with a brazen Yankees logo, orthodox Hershel takes his faith and culture quite seriously, peppering his speech with Hebrew phrases and insisting on the seat that points toward Jerusalem; in contrast, non-practicing Ben disparages his nose and practically sneers at his devout acquaintance. But it's one fleeting moment, in which Ben callously humiliates Hershel, that serves as the catalyst for the plot: the luckless, loveless salesman suffers a catastrophe, blames it on the forced breach of faith, and explodes into Ben and Hannah's luxe shared apartment (courtesy of set designer Sarah Tanner) to insist that Ben right this wrong. After one patronizing lecture about kosher law and a few more callous and over-the-top comic scenes, Ben and Hannah are ready to do whatever it takes to end the indefinite visit.

Click to read more ...