SINS OF THE FATHER
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“Become a great artist. It is the only way to justify the pain you will cause,” says Jacob Kahn to Asher Lev, the 13-year-old Orthodox boy with the disturbing gift for art. “What do I have to justify?” wonders this prodigy, who will find that his search for truth and fulfillment takes him farther and farther from his family, his culture, and his religion. “In the entire history of European art, there has not been a single religious Jew who was a great painter,” Kahn reminds him. Later Anna Schaeffer, the Manhattan gallery owner, scoffs at Lev: “Indulge your Jewish sentimentality back in Brooklyn.” The conflicts engendered in this young artist by a goyish if not outright pagan milieu and by the characters of his proud, bewildered father, who guards the family’s lofty position in the Hassidic community, and mother, who loves them both and agonizes over their estrangement, finally express themselves in an iconographic painting so shocking that even the wise and sympathetic rabbi must order Lev to leave the community. “So now you are truly alone,” Kahn shrugs. “Welcome to the world of the artist.”
We never actually see this painting, but the characters’ responses to it are so vivid and well defined in this National Jewish Theater production that each audience member can see it clearly in his or her own imagination –and empathize with the suffering its creation demanded. Jane Galt’s great Kokoschka swirl of a set heightens the poignancy: it recalls a stormy sea cyclone, with one distant illuminated window like a beacon and Lev’s family scenes framed by a window, a foreshadowing of the painting. Under David Cromer’s direction, Les Hinderyckx as Kahn and Joan Kohn as Schaeffer emerge from the disorderly world of modern art as toughened, compassionate angels. John Judd and Annabel Armour as Aryeh and Rivkeh Lev are at the opposite end of the spectrum: studies in discipline and unquestioning faith. In the middle is Asher Lev, played by Jeffrey Lieber with just the right balance of youthful arrogance and vulnerability. Though the opening-night performance suffered from a slight stiffness (and Judd’s earlockless beard could use some finishing), this production should soon settle into a well-told and universally understood tale of ecstasy and sacrifice.
