CANTORIAL
Ira Levin’s Cantorial, begun in l980 and completed during the early part of the decade, is very much a product of its time. The play is so filled with yearning for the past that it literally features a voice that cries in Hebrew, “Build your house the way it was!”
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The voice belongs to a long-dead cantor who haunts a home that was, until very recently, a tiny synagogue. Now the Lower East Side building belongs to a young couple: Leslie is Jewish, Warren’s a goy. They are so quintessentially l980s-style upwardly mobile–he works for Shearson Lehman selling futures, she works in public relations for Harper & Row–that they seem more than a little dated.
Warren is looking for a daddy. And he finds daddies in spades. At various times in the story, Morris, the ghost cantor, and even Warren’s real father dispense fatherly advice and bark out orders (which may or may not be followed).
Who cares whether Warren follows his gut or the dictates of a ghost cantor? What matters is that he attains those twin indications of grace in America: he does what he likes, and he gets the heritage he’s always wanted.
