One of the problems of staging a play that largely takes place around a long table — with a number of place settings — is how to permit the audience to see the facial expressions of all the characters, especially if some have their backs to the viewers. Last February, when Lisa Loomer’s provocative play, Two Things You Don’t Talk About at Dinner,was aired in a Play-Summit reading at the Denver Center, this was not a problem, as all the players were more of less in line at their respective music stands. So, this script seemed a Natural for New York audiences: especially those who can never get enough of Holocaust drama and the triumph of Israel, the only democracy and America’s only ally in the Middle East.
Loomer’s drama, which has as its basic contention the potential rift between two very old friends, an Israel-committed liberal, Los Angeleno Jewess (Mimi Lieber) and an Americanized Arab (Nasser Faris), who knows what it is to have been dispossessed by post-Holocaust Zionists. His Parents were Palestinians who had to leave Haifa for Lebanon, to escape the encroachments of the newly developing State of Israel. This, even in the original play reading, recalled another politically charged dinner-table drama: Omnium-Gatherum, co-authored by Theresa Rebeck, a New-Play-Summit veteran, who, nonetheless, had O-G produced at the Humana-Festival in Louisville, by Actors Theater.
In Rebeck’s fantasy dinner, Loomer’s Lebanese was, instead, speaking in the fictive person of, say, an Edward Saïd. Rather like Bernard Shaw’s Don Juan in Hell, with Semitic cousins contesting historical rights. Of course, the other thing you do not discuss at dinner is politics. Or is it religion? Or is Israel such a convoluted problem that it is both a religious and a political no-no?
Of course, Loomer cannot be accused of imitating Rebeck, as she has enriched her dialogues of the non-Carmelites with a female Fundamentalist Protestant fanatic who passionately believes that only She — not her Jewish friends — is going to Heaven. Her spiritual problems are complicated by a lumpy, dumpy son, who has decided to rebel by aping the Suras (the Aphorisms of the Buddha). Then there’s an angry Orthodox Auschwitz rememberer, who has married a Japanese woman, who has converted. But there’s also a loud, out-of-control, Hollywood-type anti-Jew, with both an alcohol and a foul mouth problem. His daughter is a bulimic pothead. Or did the Pot come from the Buddha-lover?
So complicated a people mix. So little time to sort them all out. But there were — as far as I could understand the various conversations and rants — no Mormons on-board!
For those in the audience who had never experienced a traditional Seder, playwright Loomer and director Wendy C. Goldberg put us all through the paces. But no bitter herbs for the spectators – unless they found the play confusing. In a reading, having a number of dinner guests is not a visual problem. In an actual production, especially with so many goblets, plates, cutlery, wines and foods, some of the character confrontations and dialogic dissertations can, unfortunately, get lost in the shuffle. There’s also the problem — not present in an in-line reading — of characters silently interacting in other areas of the stage, while arguments are percolating at the Seder table. This year, in Brentwood! Next year, in Occupied Gaza?
Actually, author Loomer’s title is misleading. When questions about Israel arise, politics and religion automatically become one thing, not two. But Loomer does not shy away from dealing with essential issues. When Palestinian Arabs are denounced as terrorists, the terrorist tactics of the Stern Gang and the Irgun zvei Leumi in establishing the State of Israel are also cited (notably, the Massacre of Deir Yassin.) Also, the fact that Israel has many more Atomic-Warheads than Iran can even dream of.
When and if Two Things comes to Manhattan — not to mention a theater near you — choosing the right venue is of prime importance. The audience needs to see who is talking, when they are talking. Not easy, with a dozen or so people seated around a table. This really killed Omnium-Gatherum in New York, where it was produced on the tiny stage of the now-vanished but once-landmarked Variety Photoplays Theater. In Louisville, it was staged so that the audience looked down on the table, the characters and the action — such as it was — whereas, in New York, the table could hardly fit on the small stage. Most of the time, the also-small audience was looking at the backs of the characters.
So, how might Two Things fare in New York City? If you cannot talk about politics and religion, what is there left to discuss anymore? Reality TV? The Kim Kardashian Nuptials: Till Death Do Us Part? School vouchers? Gay marriages, followed by Caesarean-section abortions? Why doesn’t someone write a play about the current discussion-topic epic drought?
