BEAU JEST
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At the center of the play is the mildly neurotic 30-year-old Sarah Goldman. As the faithful, somewhat wimpy daughter of Jewish parents–Abe and Miriam Goldman, from Skokie no less–she wants to make them happy. But making them happy means going out with (and maybe even marrying) some nice Jewish boy. A doctor, maybe? Or a lawyer? She could do worse. And has. Her current beau, Chris Kringle (no kidding), is a whining, Waspy account executive at Leo Burnett. He couldn’t pass for Jewish if his life depended on it. So Sarah invents an imaginary boyfriend, a “beau geste,” named David Steinberg (Dr. David Steinberg), a fantasy figure who is considerably more acceptable to Abe and Miriam than Mr. Kringle could ever be.
One day, two weeks before Passover, Abe and Miriam ask to meet this wonderful Dr. Steinberg. So Sarah invites them over for Sabbath dinner, and ignoring Chris’s protests, hires an escort to impersonate the fictional boyfriend. Unfortunately, the man the escort service sends, Bob Schroeder, is not Jewish either. “Oh my God,” she laments when she finds out. “I’m going to die. They’ll find my body.” Luckily, Bob happens to be an actor. “I can improvise,” he reassures her. “I took classes at Second City.” Even better, he knows Fiddler on the Roof by heart, having appeared in it at Candlelight Dinner Theatre; he was so convincing “even Herschel Bernardi thought [he] was Jewish.”
Sarah: I love you.
Some credit for the grace should go to Dennis Zacek and his able cast, all of whom do their best to avoid easy stereotypes. Roslyn Alexander’s funny, likable Miriam is the very antithesis of the stereotypical Jewish mother. And Linnea Todd could not have done more to make it clear that Sarah is not a Jewish American princess. Michael Guido proves quite charming as Schroeder/Steinberg. It is not hard to see why Sarah eventually falls for him, just as it’s not hard to understand why she falls out of love with Peter Curren’s appropriately colorless Chris. In point of fact, there is not one disappointing performance in this unexpectedly terrific play.
