Young playwrights often try to pack so many themes into their plays, you’d think each one was the last they planned to write. By contrast, 75-year-old Alan Brandt says what he has to say in 90 minutes of elegantly articulate prose liberally laced with enough schmaltz to soften any trace of sermonizing and enough brain-fodder to temper the smallest tendency toward sitcom-sweetness.
Of course, what Brandt has to say does not purport to be profound or densely intellectual. Nathan Minter, his protagonist, is a prosperous middle-aged lawyer whose high-profile pro bono work for Worthy Causes has made him something of a celebrity supermensch. But his martinet father is beginning to mellow with age, his likewise achievement-oriented son is beginning to outstrip him, and his gentile wife is beginning to desire his presence at home more often. Clearly some changes are mandated, but not until his world has all but collapsed around him will this leader of men finally follow the advice of his sire and his offspring to accept his place in this new social order.
Father-Son tensions are nothing new in American literature, but Brandt’s maturity gives him the insight to portray not two, but three generations of males coming to terms with what that designation means and what responsibilities it confers. Certainly the children of the Baby-Boom years, of which Nathan is one, can claim to have survived troubled times, but Brandt makes a fair and compassionate case for the Depression-era Morris as well as the Gen-X Marc—for when in our country’s history have we NOT been confronted with change and conflict?
Whatever its moral, 2 1/2 Jews is undeniably a showcase for three virtuoso actors, and Apple Tree Theatre is privileged to have Gary Houston’s superlative interpretational expertise in the role of the glib Nathan, Joe Dempsey’s constrained-dynamo vitality in the role of the frustrated Marc, and veteran character actor Nathan Davis’ patriarchal presence in the role of the curmudgeonly Morris. Under the direction of Stevi Marks, they forge a forum for masculine issues in which even the unseen (mostly female) denizens are rendered whole and vivid, so aware are we of their importance to the men for whose happiness we come to care deeply.