InterAct's "House Divided' (3rd review)

A plot that's too intricate by half

STEVE COHEN

House Divided is a well-crafted play about a Jewish-American family that has broken apart over religion, politics and the Jewish state. This is a rich area for exploration, and playwright Larry Loebell and the Seth Rozin and the Interact Theatre Company are to be commended for bringing it to the stage. I just wish it flowed more naturally.

Loebell recognizes what other authors and playwrights have ignored: that many Diaspora Jews, especially American leftists, feel differently about Israel than others who tend to be religiously and/or politically conservative. He dramatizes these differences in one household where brothers have been antagonists for decades. Like the brothers in Arthur Miller’s The Price, these men made vastly different choices about family and social responsibility. Their hostility and their competitive relationship add interesting layers. But, in the end, the plot is too tricky.

As my BSR colleague Jim Rutter has correctly pointed out, the play is only tangentially about the Israel-Palestinian conflict and is more about universal familial quarrels. The Goldstein family of Philadelphia is torn apart when older brother Louis decides to move to Israel during the Vietnam war while his younger brother Douglas builds a life around peace activism. Two decades later the two brothers are forced to re-engage one another when their respective sons make surprising life decisions of their own.

Too many flashbacks

On the one hand, what happened in America in the early ’70s motivates the characters. On the other, the interweaving of past and present in a series of flashbacks is just too intricate.

Loebell presents people who say what many of us hear discussed among American Jews, in colorful and colloquial language. He gets the nuances right. He also recognizes that a variety of attitudes abound in Israel itself– even among Israeli soldiers. The general public may be aware that some religious groups don’t support the idea of a Jewish state and refuse to serve in its army, but this play focuses on doubts that exist even in the broad mainstream.

There are no pat answers, and the main players are credible. The problem is with the tying-up of loose ends involving trips back and forth between the Middle East and America, as well as time trips between yesterday and today. Nor do we really need a gimmicky plot trick by which we learn that one son is involved with a Palestinian girl.

A confusion of accents

Typifying the over-complication of the plot is the business of accents. Davy Raphaely, playing a U.S.-born Israeli, speaks with an Israeli accent when he converses with his American uncle and cousin, presumably speaking in English. But when he’s in Israel and presumably speaking in Hebrew, he speaks in un-accented English.

The most consistent accent is that of David Howey. This Shakespearian veteran is commanding as the American man who made aliyah years ago, and he never slips in his use of a European-based accent. Trouble is, American Jews who live in Israel for decades invariably speak Hebrew with an American accent, sometimes leavened by a Middle-Eastern flavor but never with a European accent.

I’m nit picking on this point, I know; these are such complicated areas that it’s easy to make a minor slip. In re-working this interesting script for future productions, I hope that Loebell, Rozin and others try to simplify external elements.

The cast is solid: Raphaely, Howey, Paul Meshejian, Dan Hodge, Noah Herman and Robert T. DaPonte.



To read another review by Bob Cronin, click here.
To read another review by Jim Rutter, click here.