May 13, 2016
The Montreal GazetteBy Jim Burke
May 13, 2016
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If the title of Joshua Harmon’s phenomenally successful play Bad Jews makes you uncomfortable, what erupts out of its characters’ mouths throughout its 90 minutes is unlikely to put you at ease.
A family drama that at times seems like a vicious, very funny cage fight staged in the cramped confines of a Manhattan apartment, it centres on a trio of 20-something relatives forced to spend time together, Huis Clos-style, after the funeral of their grandfather, a Holocaust survivor.
Brian Dudkiewicz’s set draws the audience into the arena by way of a connecting corridor before battle commences.
Segal chief Lisa Rubin has gathered a young, fresh-faced cast for her directorial debut, which goes toward maximizing the energy of the production. The baddest of these Bad Jews is Sarah Segal-Lazar’s Daphna, who thinks of herself as the epitome of the good Jew but sprays calculatedly cruel invective at everybody around her. Segal-Lazar plays her with a hilariously potent mix of wheedling faux-sincerity and withering nastiness.
Daphna’s arch-nemesis is cousin Liam (Jamie Elman), whose cynical secularism Daphna takes as a personal affront. Liam’s mild-mannered brother Jonah (Jake Goldsbie) is stuck, uncomfortable in the middle, while Liam’s seemingly bubble-headed gentile girlfriend Melody (Victoria Diamond) provides tantalizing prey for Daphna’s feral cattiness.
Much of the play consists of extended monologues played out as arias of deep loathing. They’re brilliantly written, but not always actor friendly, and there were one or two stumbles over their tricky terrain on opening night. But when the cast members hit their stride, this is a ferociously entertaining evening, filled with poisonous one-liners that have the audience simultaneously shuddering and guffawing.
***
If love is in short supply in the Segal Studio, it runneth over on the main stage, where Joe DiPietro and Jimmy Roberts’s charmingly titled I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change is playing. It’s a musical revue consisting of 20-odd songs that sometimes poignantly, mostly comically chronicle the progress of romantic love — from the flush of first dates through the trials of parenthood and on to the pangs, and perhaps second chances, of widowhood.
Created in the mid-’90s, it became the second-longest-running off-Broadway musical — an impressive achievement, to be sure, but one that kind of makes it (in the words of one of its songs) Always a Bridesmaid.
It’s a rather slight piece of sugary froth, and one that is pretty much trapped in the ’90s. Many of its jokes, particularly those to do with the awkwardness of dating, seem like outtakes from Friends — though at times we seem to be back in a 1950s sitcom, with its tired gags about nagging wives in the passenger seat or husbands enduring endless shopping trips.
Director Wade Lynch and his design team wisely embrace the show’s outdated feel, taking oversized cellphones as a cue for amplifying the dimensions of all the props. Marjolaine Provençal’s set, lit by Nicolas Descôteaux, is a dazzling explosion of ’90s wine-bar neon, dominated by male/female symbols and a big shiny broken heart, which can, significantly, be put back together again.
The four-strong cast — Steffi Didomenicantonio, Will Lamond, Adrian Marchuk and Tringa Rexhepi (all wittily, often lavishly costumed by Louise Bourret) — are in fine voice and are crisply drilled by choreographer Kerry Gage. They make for an appealing compendium of couples, though it’s hard to get genuine belly laughs from such shamelessly pandering material.
A song about a tough guy succumbing to floods of tears after being dragged along to a weepie hits the mark, and a pastiche of Italian opera ignites the stage with a sense of epic silliness, even if it does resort to the hackneyed inclusion of pizza delivery boys.
The show works best in its more uncharacteristically low-key moments. A touching portrait of enduring love at the breakfast table is beautifully done, and it’s all topped off by a wonderfully eccentric soft-shoe shuffle in a funeral home that almost makes up for the crashing obviousness of most of what’s gone before.
AT A GLANCE
I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change continues to Sunday, May 29 at the Segal Centre, 5170 Côte-Ste-Catherine Rd.; tickets cost $50 to $64, $32 for students, $40 for those under 30, $45 to $57.50 for seniors. Bad Jews continues to Sunday, May 29 at the Segal Studio; tickets cost $44 to $59, $24.50 for students, $35 for those under 30, $39.50 to $53 for seniors. Call 514-739-7944 or visit segalcentre.org.