'Last Schwartz' is certainly not the least

By Hap Erstein, Palm Beach Post Theater Writer

Did you ever wonder what Edward Albee's plays might be like if he had been Jewish?

The thought comes to mind watching Deborah Zoe Laufer's The Last Schwartz, a battle royal among a Catskills clan gathered for the Yarzheit memorial of the family patriarch. Of course they are dysfunctional -- is there any other kind of family in the American theater? -- but as they hurl recriminations, open old wounds and share long-kept secrets, they do so with an ethnic-specific comic attitude.

The gears between incendiary drama and wickedly self-deprecating humor occasionally grind uneasily in The Last Schwartz. Still, in Laufer's reach for both emotional extremes and in her frequent achievement of them, she shows herself to be a vital new voice for the theater willing to wade into potentially abrasive waters and skillful enough to cut the sting with laughter.

Like the dinosaurs that are alluded to metaphorically, the Schwartzes are facing extinction. It is probable that none of the four adult siblings will carry on the family name to the next generation, let alone its religious identity. The eldest is stern, disapproving Norma, the only one to produce a son, but her iron-handed parenting has driven him and her husband away. She alone tries to maintain a connection to Judaism and its traditions, despite the indifference of her three younger brothers.

There's Herb, whose marriage to gentile Bonnie has resulted in a heart-breaking series of miscarriages and a lack of faith in a higher being. Astronomy-obsessed and odd enough to be unearthly, unmarried Simon does look to the heavens, but he has gone blind from searching. And youngest brother Gene, a director of commercials hoping to graduate to feature films, is detached from the family, and unattached, so he brings a date to his father's memorial.

That date, free-spirited actress wannabe Kia, whose religious philosophy is "Life should be fun," is Laufer's most appealing creation. A complete outsider, blissfully absent of guilt and free of angst, she finds the Jewish rituals and prayers "totally cool." Unlike the Jewish characters, each tied up in emotional knots, Kia says and does what she pleases, and the contrast provides much of the play's humor.

When Kia lets slip that she is pregnant and about to abort Gene's child, the news all but unhinges Bonnie, who once had a brief fling with Gene and has not gotten over yearning for her brother-in-law. To forge a permanent connection with him and gain the child she always wanted, Bonnie hysterically offers to set Kia up in a Manhattan apartment and then take possession of her baby.

The child, an Albee-like device crossed with echoes of Rosemary's Baby, is just one of the tugs-of-war in the play's second act. For The Last Schwartz is about values, personal and tangible, and the struggle for happiness, in the universe and in the family unit. It does not always show the Jewish people at their best -- which is bound to rile some theatergoers -- but it is easy to see one's own family in the Schwartzes' squabbles, regardless of your cultural roots.

For the play's world premiere production, director Louis Tyrrell juggles well its tonal extremes, greatly assisted by his capable ensemble. Laufer draws her women more fully than the men, and the female cast members accentuate that chasm. Elizabeth Dimon's Norma goes through life with a perpetual scowl, yet the actress manages to show the concern for the family that almost makes her cold manner justified. From the start, Alicia Roper is on the verge of tears as she recounts an Oprah program about freakish Siamese twins, and her chin remains trembling -- out of elation and dejection -- throughout the evening.

Mayhill Fowler (Kia) gets most of the best lines, either ditsy interjections or sudden insight, and the actress makes them all sound even better than written. As abstract, distracted Simon, Greg Keller is so still and silent much of the time he might as well be furniture on Allen Cornell's authentically appointed set.

Whether the family unit as we know it, or even organized religion, will survive into the next millennium is unclear. But when a new dramatist like Laufer comes along, it is reassuring to think that perhaps the theater still has a future.

hap_erstein@pbpost.com