Theater Review by Samuel L. Leiter . . .
Are you a sucker for sentiment? Do you not care that much if a play you’re seeing is contrived, clichéd, and conventional, as long as you enjoy the company of its characters and the familiarity of its situations? That, at least, is how I reacted to Cary Gitter’s The Sabbath Girl, which I saw four years ago at 59E59 Theaters. Now that play is back in the form of a musical—subtitled “A New Musical”—at the same venue. It remains a touchingly amusing rom-com, directed once again by Joe Brancato (now also credited for conceiving the show) for Stony Point, NY’s Penguin Rep Theatre, which gave it its world premiere. (This review uses some material from my original one.)
I admit that, just as in 2020, I found it impossible not to tear up pleasurably, both while reading and watching it. I may have had minor issues with the hour-and-35-minute production, but my eyes watered as I sniffed the aroma of interfaith romance bubbling from the creators’ melting pot. The addition of nicely-integrated songs (with lyrics by Gitter and Neil Berg and music by Berg) into the libretto—which hews closely to Gitter’s play—works surprisingly well, and supports the work’s emotional and comic underpinnings.
The Sabbath Girl is a throwback to Abie’s Irish Rose, Anne Nichols’s 1922 farce about the romance between a Jewish boy and an Irish-Catholic girl, who face objections to their love. While that play smashed Broadway long-run records, its best-known offspring, the TV sitcom “Bridget Loves Bernie,” stirred up so much religious protest against its Jewish-Catholic alliance that it was yanked after only one season (1972-1973), despite high ratings.
Nowadays, despite mixed marriages being so common, the issue can still roil families and religious leaders. If you know couples who’ve been in such a relationship, you’ve probably witnessed the disruptions it can cause, especially where religious ties remain strong. Such, as expected, is true of The Sabbath Girl, which makes its ecumenical points through typical ethnic humor as well as schmaltzy emotionality.
It begins, of course, with the meet-cute business. Angie (Marilyn Caserta), an attractive, Italian-American, 30-year-old, ambitious, art gallery curator from New Jersey, has just moved into a small NYC apartment. Who’s that knocking at her door this steamy Friday night? Why it’s her Orthodox Jewish neighbor, Seth (Max Wolkowitz), a cute, 32-year-old knish-maker who, with his sister, Rachel (Lauren Singerman), owns and operates Konig’s Knishes on the Lower East Side. What does he want? Someone to turn on his A/C.
You see, Friday night is the beginning of the Sabbath (Shabbos), when observant Jews aren’t—among other restrictions—permitted to turn on electrical appliances. They can, however, have a gentile (goy) do the job. Thus, the Yiddish moniker, Shabbos goy, for non-Jews who do these tasks.
Things begin to heat up between Seth, a divorcé whose unhappy marriage was an arranged one, and Angie, a Roman Catholic who believes that “pretty much every guy in the city is an asshole in one way or another.” She’s putting her energy into making a success of her “edgy” art gallery, while he—an admirer of American Jewish writers like Bellow and Roth—secretly writes short stories (albeit, unconvincingly, in a tiny notebook).
Both Seth and Angie have advisors, his being his 35-year-old, thoroughly traditional, married sister, Rachel, who wants to fix him up with a girl from their old shul in Riverdale. He refuses another arranged marriage. Rachel, of course, is adamantly opposed to his marrying outside his faith.
Angie listens to the words of wisdom of her flashy, earthy grandmother, Sophia (Diana DiMarzio), from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, whose appearances have a touch of magic about them. Sophia’s thoughts, unlike Rachel’s, are on the liberal romantic side.
Complicating things is the ambitious young artist, Blake (Rory Max Kaplan), a sexy, sunglasses-wearing rebel, with shoulder-length hair and an ego that could inflate the Hindenburg. Angie wants to exhibit his work but Blake wants her to “woo” him first. Angie will have to choose between Blake, the “artist with icicles in his veins,” as Sophia describes him, or Seth, the “Orthodox Jew with love in his heart.” Essentially, The Sabbath Girl is a battle between art versus knishes.
(Speaking of knishes, when Rachel mentions a girl Seth should date, the name she offers is Rebecca Shimmel, whose family sells wigs. Anyone familiar with the knish world will probably consider this an in-joke aimed at NY’s most famous knish store, Yonah Shimmel’s.)
There are few surprises—the big reveal about one of the characters not only turns the play’s reality on its head but makes you question someone else’s sanity—but there’s enough sweetness and light to hide the cornier ingredients. A major example of the latter is the caricaturish behavior of the self-assured Blake, making his transition to downhome, farm boy grunge toward the end even harder to accept.
Christopher and Justin Swader have revised their original set to support the many locale shifts in the episodic plot, providing two narrow, upstage brick walls connected by an overhead arch, forming a central exit- and entranceway. Jamie Roderick’s unintrusive lighting does what’s required. Gregory Gale’s costumes differ from those he did for the original, especially Sophia’s dress, which was far more colorful in 2020. And would an Orthodox Jew engage in conversation with a single woman—Jewish or otherwise—while wearing a “wifebeater” undershirt without attempting to cover up?
Caserta’s Lauren, appealing as she is, could—like her predecessor—use more Jersey color, while Wolkowitz’s Seth not only looks right but effectively captures the guy’s ethnic quality. Singerman (the only member back from the 2020 company) is pitch-perfect as the immovably traditional sister, practically stealing the show in both her comedic timing (her sarcastic facial expressions are priceless) and in conveying Rachel’s religious commitment. DiMarzio is excellent as the worldly Sophia, who could very well come from Bensonhurst, while Kaplan is often funny in what is otherwise the least convincing character.
All the actors—who are miked despite the theater’s intimacy—sing well enough to carry the show’s 16 songs, most of them agreeably tuneful, to what sounds like accompaniment from a single piano. Wendy Bobbit Cavett is the musical supervisor and arranger, Matthew Lowy the musical director, and Alex Wise the orchestrator. I’d have preferred, however, for director Brancato to have staged the songs more creatively by having them sung less frequently straight out to the audience, as “numbers,” than to the characters with whom they’re interacting.
So while I had reservations about The Sabbath Girl I have no reservations about confessing that it made me both laugh and cry. It also reminded me that it’s finally time to visit Yonah Shimmel’s. And isn’t that mitzvah enough?
The Sabbath Girl: A New Musical. Through September 1 at 59E59 Theaters/Theater A (59 East 59th Street, between Park and Madison Avenues). www.59e59.org
Photos: Dorice Arden Madronero
