http://theater.nytimes.com/2011/07/20/theater/reviews/a-strange-and-separate-people-review.htmlTheater Review | 'A Strange and Separate People'
A Gay Man Seeks a Place
in an Orthodox World
By DAVID ROONEY
Published: July 19, 2011
A Strange and Separate People
Noah Weisberg, left, and Jonathan Hammond in Jon Marans's drama at the
Studio Theater.In his evocative 2009 docudrama,
“The Temperamentals,” the playwright
Jon Marans examined the stigma of being gay in pre-Stonewall America, when the threat of exposure could leave friendships, careers and even lives dangling by a thread.
Mr. Marans’s 2005 play,
“A Strange and Separate People,” at the
Studio Theater on Theater Row, is in many ways a contemporary companion piece, though the risk of vilification this time comes not from the world at large but from a hermetic group with its own rules.
This engrossing three-character drama addresses the struggle for many to accept their homosexuality while adhering to their religious beliefs, in this case those of Orthodox Judaism.
A doctor and recent baal teshuva, or convert from nonobservance to Orthodoxy,
Stuart (
Noah Weisberg) believes he can be part of a new breed of “discreet but open” gay men. He visits the Upper West Side home of
Phyllis (
Tricia Paoluccio), the frazzled mother of an unseen (but frequently heard) autistic child, ostensibly to hire her catering company for a party.
Their unlikely friendship becomes a more complicated triangle when Phyllis’s husband,
Jay (
Jonathan Hammond), enters the picture over an awkward Sabbath dinner. Jay is a psychologist who offers therapy for “same-sex attraction disorder,” not the ideal ice breaker with a gay guest. But it soon becomes apparent that the surface hides a messier reality.
As in “The Temperamentals,” Mr. Marans, a 1996 Pulitzer Prize finalist for his drama
“Old Wicked Songs,” is stronger on character than on structure and on emotional texture rather than on dialogue, too often resorting to didactic talking points. The process by which the lifelong Orthodox couple become more open-minded and the convert grows more restrictive in his thinking is somewhat schematic.
The bigger weakness in
Jeff Calhoun’s efficient production is Phyllis. In his script notes the playwright describes her as having a private demeanor that conceals the pit bull underneath. In Ms. Paoluccio’s hard-to-like characterization, the dog is off the leash, and while Phyllis gradually softens, her abrasiveness compromises the play’s balance.
Defensive and self-righteous, she shoves her superior knowledge — of parenting, autism, the Torah, Fauvism, you name it — down everyone’s throat. Her first scene with Stuart makes you wonder if many prospective clients of Phyllis’s Orthodox Catering ever return after the consultation. The upstairs studio at Theater Row is an unforgiving space that makes modulation imperative, and the impassioned performances of Ms. Paoluccio and Mr. Hammond, especially, can be punishing on the eardrums.
But the play explores intriguing questions and yields affecting observations as it considers the courage required to make waves in any environment, from the synagogue to the New York State Legislature. If Mr. Marans could rein in his tendency toward overstatement, this topical play might find a commercial niche similar to that of “The Temperamentals.”
“A Strange and Separate People” continues through July 30 at the Studio Theater at Theater Row, 410 West 42nd Street, Clinton; (212) 239-6200, telecharge.com.
