A SHAYNA MAIDEL
Circle Theatre
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A Shayna Maidel is Barbara Lebow’s story of the reunion of a fatefully separated family. Rayzel Weiss and her father Mordechai are Polish Jews who lived in New York during the 1930s and ’40s. But Rayzel’s mother and sister were trapped in Poland, and for years their fate has been unknown. In 1946, Rayzel’s sister Lusia comes to New York–to stay with Rayzel while she searches for her husband Duvid, whom she hasn’t seen since they were carted off to separate concentration camps.
Lusia’s sudden appearance forces Rayzel to consider her own life–what she has lost and what she has been fortunate enough to hold on to. Raised in America, Rayzel thinks of herself as American–she wants to fit in. She has changed her name to Rose White (though she doesn’t dare tell her ultraconservative father this) and has made a home for herself in a Manhattan apartment while her father stays with the rest of the family back in Brooklyn. Lusia’s presence helps bring Rayzel and her father closer together–but the connection is painful, as Rayzel realizes how little she knows her family’s, and her people’s, history. Meanwhile, under Lusia’s quiet and inscrutable surface lies a world of memories and fantasies, which come to life unexpectedly with the poetic resonance only a play can create.
Wayne Buidens directed and wrote this parody, and his script relies heavily on Lukas Heller’s screenplay. Buidens gives Davis and Crawford the Rocky Horror Show treatment, turning them into the iconic center of a pop-music party. Some of his ideas are inspired. “I’ve Written a Letter to Daddy,” Baby Jane’s signature tune, segues into a 1960s Supremes medley, with little Jane (an engaging and energetic Eddie Schumacher) belting out “Baby Love” and jealous sister Blanche (husky-voiced Tyron’ Sean Perry) rasping the pleading lyrics of “Love Child.” (In a move that both embraces and cleverly satirizes the ethics of color-blind casting, Schumacher and the actor playing Jane and Blanche’s mother are white, while Perry and the actor playing their father are black.) Later, when Jane kicks Blanche senseless, Deanna Norman–who has the Bette Davis impersonation down to a tee–strips down to black fishnets and merry widow and belts out “I Get a Kick Out of You,” while a line of dancing chorus boys rhythmically stomp Blanche into the floor. The genteel neighbor ladies from the movie have been transformed into a butch lesbian takeoff on Jackie Gleason and Art Carney, while Blanche’s subservient black maid is now a white, gum-chewing Connie Francis wanna-be.
