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Play Tim

Heading to the Big Apple? Check out this sampling
of plays by Jewish playwrights, including recent
Pulitzer Prize winner Donald Margulies.

I is that time of year again. The
New York theater world is gear-
ing up for its annual awards cere-
monies, in which the best of the
past year's Broadway and Off-Broadway
productions will be honored. Tony
Award nominees for the best of
Broadway will be announced May 8
(the show will air June 4), the Drama
Desk awards for both Broadway and
Off-Broadway
productions will
be handed out
May 14 and the
Obie awards for
Off-Broadway
shows will be
named May 15.
This year,
two Jewish play-
wrights, and
their plays, are
likely con-
tenders for top
honors —
Donald
Margulies, for
his critically acclaimed Off-Broadway
show Dinner With Friends, for which he
has just won the Pulitzer Prize, and
Martin Sherman for his Broadway play
Rose.
A comedy about relationships,
Dinner With Friends deals with a pair of
40-something, upscale Connecticut -
couples who are longtime best friends.
But their close ties are threatened after
one of the couples announces the end
of their 12 year marriage.
The play opens in the kitchen of
Gabe and Karen, who have just
returned from Italy and are reminiscing
about their vacation. Beth, their dinner
guest, breaks down sobbing while
revealing the news of her impending
Alice Burdick Schweiger is a New-
York-based freelance writer.

-

divorce from Tom. Gabe and Karen
first blame Tom, who left Beth for a
younger woman. Then, they listen to
Tom's side of the story.
The breakup of their best friends
causes Gabe and Karen to explore their
own relationship. The play, which stars
Matthew Arkin, Lisa Emery, Carolyn
McCormick and Jonathan Walker, is
filled with funny and insightful dia-
logue.
And without a doubt, Margulies'
Jewish American values come across as

0

Matthew Arkin, Lisa Emery, Carolyn
McCormick and Jonathan Walker star
in "Dinner with Friends."

well. "The characters are amalgams of
people I know, and although they are
not overtly Jewish, Gabe has a Jewish
voice because he is the closest to mine,"
says Margulies. The playwright has been
married for 13 years to a physician and
has an 8-year-old son.
"Gabe is my spokesperson and bears
a certain ethos, like me. Judaism in my
life is omnipresent — it's the way I was
raised and is always with me. It's one of
those components of who I am and
how I view the world."
The play is resonating profoundly
with people of all ages, says Margulies.
'And what's wonderful is that [in] some

111

or the past cou-
ple of months,
playwright
way it gets them talking
Martin Sherman
and analyzing their own
has been capturing the
relationships."
attention of theater-goers
Dinner with Friends
with the Broadway play
debuted in Paris before
Rose, a one-woman show
coming to New York.
starring Olympia Dukakis.
"The style in France is
When the curtain rises,
much more minimalist
Rose, an 80-year-old Jewish
Pulitzer Prize winner
and a much colder pro- Donald Margulies:
woman, is sitting on a
duction," notes
Yudaism in my life is
bench in her Miami Beach
Margulies. "The New
°omnipresent — it's the
apartment, sitting shiva for
York production would- way I was raised and is
a 9-year-old girl whose
n't work in France, it's
always with me. Its one of identity the audience does-
more theatrical — and
those components of who I n't learn until the play's end.
more heimish."
am and how I view the
Barely shifting from her
Of all his plays,
world."
spot on the bench, Rose,
Margulies says that
who is twice widowed, tells
Dinner With Friends is
the story of her life, beginning in a
his most autobiographical to date.
Ukrainian shtetl where she was born.
Born and raised in Brooklyn by work-
Enduring constant tragedy, Rose
ing-class Jewish parents, Margulies
describes surviving a pogrom, moving to
wanted to be an artist when he was
the Warsaw Ghetto and losing family
growing up. It wasn't until he was in
members during the Holocaust.
art school that he "began to feel the
After the war, Rose boards a passen-
itch to write."
ger ship filled with immigrants to
"I pursued a playwriting tutorial and
Palestine, only to be denied admittance
it was then that the floodgates opened,"
by the British government. She returns
says the playwright, who attended two
to Europe, impetuously marries an
New York colleges, Pratt Institute and
American soldier and makes her way to
later SUNY at Purchase. "My first colle- the United States.
giate play was The Waiting Room, which
Through Rose's voice, the audience
was done in 1976. It was a watershed
learns of the disasters endured by Jews
moment seeing something performed
throughout the 20th century.
that I had written, and I was so thrilled
"I wanted people to know what it
by the experience that I decided to
was like being a European Jew this past
make that my pursuit."
century," notes Sherman, who says he
His string of successes include Gifted sees his grandmother in Rose. 'Although
Children, In Dreams Begin
it's not a true chronicle of one person, I
Responsibilities, What's Wrong with
took bits and
This Picture, Collected Stories and
pieces of people's
Sight Unseen and The Model
true-life experi-
Apartment, for which he won Obie
ences, including
awards.
my grandparents'.
Currently, Margulies, who
"The shtetl that I
teaches playwriting at Yale
mention, Yultishka,
University, is in Seattle working on
his latest play, God of Vengeance,
Olympia Dukakis
based on the Shalom Asch classic
stars
in the
of the Yiddish Theater.
one-woman
"It's about a Jewish brothel
show "Rose."

Photo by Joan Marcus

ALICE BURDICK SCHWEIGER
Special to the Jewish News

■

keeper who has a brothel in his base-
ment," explains Margulies. "He is try-
ing to preserve the purity of his 17-year
old marriageable daughter by getting a
Torah scroll and putting it in his house.
"The play was originally set in Prussia
in 1906, but I changed the setting to
New York's Lower East Side
in the 1920s. There is a
great deal of interest in
bringing this to New York
sometime next year."

5/5

2000

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