Looking "forward"
High Holidays, Alan Gross’s newest work, opened Nov. 9 at the Goodman
Theatre in Chicago. Set on one long evening in 1963 in north suburban
Chicago, the story’s core is the preparations for Billy Roman’s bar mitzvah. Billy ( Max Zuppa) is “terrified by the prospect of reciting from the Torah and desperate to find a way out of it.” He complains he doesn’t understand the words and can’t pronounce the Hebrew. He knows the ritual marks his entrance to manhood, but is asking, “What does it take to be a man?” He doesn’t see any good models in his family, which disturbs him even more.
Max Zuppa as Billy calls out Native American “words”
His older brother, Rob ( Ian Paul Custer) returns home for the High Holidays; he announces he has dropped out of college and is on his way to Berkeley to join the 1960’s counterculture that is just beginning. Their father, Nate ( Keith Kupferer), and mother, Essie ( Rengin Altay), feel they have sacrificed everything to ensure a good life for their children. But the parents have internalized the expectations of their own immigrant parents and don’t understand their sons’ rejection of the old ways as they come of age in a new America.
Rengin Altay (Essie) and Keith Kupferer (Nate) drink to a happy holiday
The ages of the boys collapse two points “where things came together in my
life," Gross, 62, said. "The bar mitzvah business and the leaving home
business . . . I am all four of the characters in High Holidays," said Gross, who used his own experience growing up in suburban Skokie, IL, as inspiration. "When my mother died, we had the shards of our family given to us: her collections, our photographs, our books of vacations, as well as my Bar Mitzvah book. I put all of these things together and what emerged was a story about growing up – all of its joys, challenges and disappointments – and ultimately, what it takes to become a man."
I was looking forward to this play, and some of my hopes were satisfied. When the father asks “Who is this Bob Dylan?” or Rob says he is going to meet his friends at the No Exit, tells his father he is going to drive across the country to Berkeley, and plays his acoustic guitar, I connected to memories of my own growing up in the 60s in the very suburb Gross references in the play. My father asked the same question, I went to the old No Exit under the “L” on Morse Avenue, and attended the University of California in Berkeley. All of us in the audience laughed with recognition at the many Yiddish-isms in the play.
Ian Paul Custer as Rob has heart-to-heart after introducing his little brother to marijuana.
Rob turns Billy on to pot for the first time. But throughout the play the pleasurable moments are disturbed by Essie, who seems to threaten Billy and actually attacks Rob’s deliberately ragged, dirty clothes with a knife, and by an amount of profanity (from both mother and father) that seems gratuitous.
Rengin Altay (Essie) gives Ian Paul Custer (Rob) strong advice
Essie moves so quickly and often between expressing love for her sons, usually in Yiddish, and threats (frequently with knife or a slipper inhand) that it is difficult to accept her as more than a caricature.
Nate and the boys are more believable through-out the long 2 plus hours of the play, but the characters’ subtext is usually a whiny “Why won’t you listen to me?” that is never answered.
Nate (Keith Kupferer) attempts to help Billy (Max Zuppa) study Hebrew
"Sometimes this is a really tough transition in families," director Steve Robman said. "A time for kids to have their own lives and points of view. It's a very fundamental thing within families." On stage, the boys’ “transition” is the catalyst for the expression of familial disappointment and anger, and, in the end, changes told to us Billy in a rather peculiar monologue as he explains the family’s future to the audience.
Patricia Simms, who previously interviewed playwright Alan Gross for Chicago Splash Magazine, wrote “A Skokie [Illinois] native, Alan is the author of a dozen plays, including his tremendously successful first play, Lunching, followed by The Phone Room, The Conversion of Leo Novotny, La Brea Tarpits, The Man in 605, Morning Call and The Secret Life of American Poets. He has also written several books for children, most notably, What if the Teacher Calls on Me? He is also a prize-winning poet.”(more)
High Holidays runs until November 29.
Tickets: ($10 – $40) are currently on sale at www.GoodmanTheatre.org.
Tickets can also be purchased at the box office (170 North Dearborn) or by
phone at 312.443.3800.
Mezztix are half-price mezzanine tickets available at 12 noon at the box
office, and at 10am online (promo code MEZZTIX) day of performance - not available by telephone.
10Tix are $10 mezzanine tickets for students available at 12 noon at the
box office, and at 10am online on the day of performance - not available by telephone. Valid student I.D. must be presented when picking
up the tickets. Limit four per student with I.D. All tickets are subject
to availability and handling fees apply. Discounted Group Tickets for 10 persons or more are available at 312.443.3820.
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Photos: Courtesy of Goodman Theatre
Published on Nov 14, 2009
