By Jessica Davis, JTNews Correspondent
While the United States fights a war with Iraq, a play has opened that is particularly poignant.
From the author of Driving Miss Daisy, Taproot Theatre presents Alfred Uhry’s comedy, The Last Night of Ballyhoo. The play is set in Atlanta in 1939, as the local Jewish community prepares for the social event of the season.
The play opens in the home of a Jewish family, the Freitags and the Levys. Striving to blend in with the rest of the neighborhood, the family decorates its own Christmas tree. As Lala Levy (Eli Katz) puts a star on the tree, her domineering mother Boo Levy (Shellie Shulkin) bickers with her, saying, “Jewish Christmas trees don’t have stars.”
Even a family that has forgotten the meaning of Passover has its limits.
“It’s so funny to me that I’m playing a Jewish girl that doesn’t know anything or care about anything Jewish,” said Katz, who herself grew up on the East Coast with two Israeli parents.
On the cusp of World War II, the family is only starting to get an idea of what is happening in Europe through radio broadcasts. In December 1939, when the play begins, they have no inkling that German Jews have anything to fear. The focus of Atlanta’s Jewish community is more on Ballyhoo, an exclusive singles dance for affluent Jews of German extraction.
The Ballyhoo event in the play is an actual festival that started in 1931. It usually lasted three days and ended with a formal ball. Ballyhoo was one of several similar gatherings that took place among the southern Jewish community.
The festival gave young singles the opportunity to get connected. Many Jewish marriages were the direct result of these events. Ballyhoo was cancelled until after World War II, started again after the war, but ceased for good in the early 1950s.
In The Last Night of Ballyhoo, Boo urges Lala to attend Ballyhoo with the crass Peachy Weil. Although they have never met, Boo is impressed with Peachy because of his social status and inherited wealth. Both Boo and Peachy discriminate between the German Jews (who they feel fit in more with the rest of society) and the Eastern European Jews (who they feel are uncivilized).
“It shows a generational challenge,” said Katz. “It’s a great way of showing that we’re finally evolving out of that.”
The family stirs, however, when patriarch Adolph Freitag hires Joe Farkas, a New York Jew of Eastern European descent. Upon meeting the Levys and Freitags, Joe is shocked at their ignorance of the Jewish faith.
The play’s main message is of how absurd hatred is, said Howard Stregack, who plays Peachy Weil and grew up in a conservative Jewish family on the East Coast. “Jews are Jews,” agreed Shulkin, who grew up in a reform Jewish family in the Seattle area. “We have to be united as a people — as one.”
“The world is on the verge of a lot of change,” said Scott Nolte, director. “Somehow we have to get back to owning our beliefs while respecting the beliefs around us.”
Although the play has big themes and ideas, it is also a delightful love story, added Nolte.
The Last Night of Ballyhoo continues through April 26 at the Taproot Theatre, 204 N. 85th St. in Greenwood. Tickets range in price from $10 to $26. For information call 206-781-9707.