Off-B'way Review: Birthright; A Walk on the Moon

Zoe Winters, Eli Gelb, Molly Ranson, Nate Mann,
and Hale Appleman in Birthright.
Credit: Emilio Madrid

Two new Off-Broadway shows deal with Jewish characters. One deeply examines the complexities of Jewish identity while the other is a shallow musical treatment of familiar tropes combining a few acceptable songs with a tired plot. Jonathan Spector’s Birthright at MCC Theater is an overwhelming wallop of a play, encompassing America’s frayed relationship with Israel as well as the individual struggle to reconcile religious affiliation with personal ethics. Pamela Gray and AnnMarie Milazzo’s A Walk on the Moon, based on Gray’s 1999 screenplay, at the Laura Pels after productions at New York Stage and Film and the George Street Playhouse, is more like a walk in the park—a familiar, not unpleasant, but not particularly exciting park. 

As he did with the vaccine controversy in Eureka Day, Spector skillfully presents multiple sides of a difficult issue in Birthright. No one is a hero or a villain, the characters are just of a group of people muddling their way through the confusion of modern life. Running at three hours and 20 minutes, the play covers 18 crucial years, 2006 to 2024, in the lives of six young Jewish friends. Director Teddy Bergman miraculously keeps the action flowing so that those three hours never drag. Each of the three acts takes place during a reunion after their trip to Israel sponsored by the titular organization to encourage American Jews to explore their connections with the homeland. As the conflict between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration and the Palestinians metastasizes, each of the group differently deals with their raging reactions and their own sense of Judaism.

Eli Gelb and Zoe Winters
in Birthright.
Credit: Emilio Madrid

In Act One, subtitled “Two Jews, Three Opinions,” the sextet wrestles with the implications of their recent trip and their personal and political entanglements with Israel and each other as they start lives outside of college and family. The continuous action takes place at the home of Chaya’s parents in a Washington DC suburb, though we only meet Chaya’s mom. Scott Pask designed the handsome set. Act Two (“A Palace in Time”), set ten years later, is a series of brief, fractured scenes on the night before the wedding and move to Israel of Alona (fragile yet ultimately strong Molly Ranson). In Act Three (“Right of Return”), the group is reunited by tragedy and split by Hamas’ terrorist massacre and Israel’s retaliatory war on Gaza. Here, as he did in Eureka Day, Spector incorporates text messages and Google searches projected onto Pask’s set. Bergman cleverly stages these scenes with Natasha Katz’s evocative lighting focusing on the reader of the digital messages with the rest of the cast in darkness and sounding like they’re underwater. David Bengali created the imaginative projections. 

Not only does Spector portray the personae’s tortured connections to their faith and culture, but also explores such weighty topics as the course of Jewish history, the changing means of communication, the coarsening of political dialogue and the meaning of community. 

Off-B'way Update: MCC Season

Leonardo DiCaprio and Johnny Depp
in What's Eating Gilbert Grape

MCC Theater has announced it 40th anniversary 2026-27 season including two new American plays and a musical adaptation of a beloved film and novel. First up is Anon--a tempest at our kitchen table by Anne Washburn (Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play), directed by Anne Kaufman, previewing Sept. 25 for an Oct. 13 opening. When a gay pride flag is flown in their suburban Texas neighborhood, two families freak out. In January, Lloyd Suh's The Heart Sellers tells the story of two immigrant strangers sharing their first Thanksgiving in America. June brings the world premiere of a musical based on What's Eating Gilbert Grape? with a book by Peter Hedges based on his 1991 novel (the basis of the 1993 movie starring Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio and Juliette Lewis). Music and lyrics are by Adrian Enscoe, Christopher Sears, Sydney Shepherd, and Regina Strayhorn. Anne Kaufman returns to MCC to direct.

"We've always sought to provoke conversations that don't happen anywhere else - and 40 years in, that energy feels stronger than ever. Our Anniversary Season features three very different, unabashedly American stories that share an urgency that is unmistakably of the moment," said Co-Artistic Director Bernie Telsey. "Will (Cantler, co-artistic director) and I are grateful to explore these worlds with the adventurous artists, audiences, and supporters who make MCC what it is. This season will be a celebration for everyone. Find us in the lobby, we can't wait to talk to you!"

Off-B'way Reviews: Cold War Choir Practice; Bigfoot!, A New Musical; Chinese Republicans

Alana Raquel Bowers, Andy Lucien, and
Crystal Finn in Cold War Choir Practice.
Credit: Maria Baranova

That distinctly weird, transitional decade, the 1980s, provides the time frame for two wildly funny Off-Broadway productions. This was a time when America was rejecting the liberal ideals of the hippie-Vietnam era and moving into the narcissistic, ego-driven period of “Me first and the rest of you be damned.” Both shows use parody to lampoon the excesses of the time. One examines serious conflicts while the other is a silly spoof. The more complex work is Cold War Choir Practice, Ro Reddick’s imaginative, surprisingly riotous take on Reaganomics, nuclear threats, and race relations co-presented by MCC Theater, Clubbed Thumb and Page 73. Set in 1987 and written with a sharp satiric edge, this insightful and mercilessly dark comedy focuses on African-American adolescent Meek (intense and winning Alana Raquel Bowers) who becomes embroiled in international espionage when she corresponds with a Russian pen pal.

Will Cobbs, Lizan Mitchell, and 
Alana Raquel Bowers in
Cold War Choir Practice.
Credit: Maria Baranova

Matters get complicated when Meek’s estranged uncle Clay (solid Andy Lucien), a prominent black conservative, brings his mysteriously ill white wife Virgie (appropriately shattered Crystal Finn) home to the family’s Syracuse, NY, roller-skating rink for the holidays. Meek’s choir Seedlings of Peace and Virgie’s cultish women’s affinity group are involved in attempting to steal Clay’s state secrets. Meek’s dad Smooch (fiery Will Cobbs) and grandma Puddin (fun and feisty Lizan Mitchell) clash with Clay and Virgie, trying to fathom their family member’s transformation from radical Black Panther follower to Reagan White House advisor. 

Off-B'way Review: Caroline

Chloë Grace Moretz and River Lipe-Smith
in Caroline.
Credit: Emilio Madrid

Preston Max Allen’s perceptive, keenly observant, and ultimately moving play Caroline begins ordinarily enough. A mother and daughter are ordering mac and cheese and French toast at a diner. The daughter, aged about 10, has a cast on her arm. The mother explains they have a long car trip ahead of them. The daughter attempts to manipulate her mom into buying her a Switch video game console, using her injury as leverage. The mother puts off the decision. Allen slowly, skillfully reveals the deeper story during this seemingly mundane scene and the one that follows in a motel room. The child, Caroline, is trans, and the two are leaving West Virginia, partially because of its harsh laws against gender-affirmative care for minors, and partly because of the mother’s abusive boyfriend. The mother, Maddie, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, plans to visit her long-estranged parents in Evanston, Illinois, to ask for help. 

Amy Landecker and Chloë Grace Moretz
in Caroline.
Credit: Emilio Madrid

Over the course of 90 minutes, Allen and his dedicated cast unpack the complex relations between three generations of a dysfunctional family, ravaged by addiction and coping with the thorny issue of gender fluidity. David Cromer’s simple direct staging allows the three performers to deliver credible, unstagey performances, free of melodramatic excess. 

Chloë Grace Moretz endows Maddie with an intense desperation to do the right thing for Caroline while also expressing the character’s frustration over her impossible situation and her regret for making so many bad choices. Amy Landecker as Maddie’s elegant mother Rhea is all frosty reserve and barely contained rage at Maddie for her crime-and drug-saturated past which made her parents’ life hell. Allen makes it clear no one is a villain here, he presents each character as complex and their motivations are understandable if not entirely justifiable. (Maddie’s father is conveniently out of town on a business trip, so the play remains a three-hander. Landecker also plays a waitress in the first scene.) Interestingly, Landecker played the daughter of a transgender father in the groundbreaking Amazon Prime series Transparent. River Lipe-Smith gives an assured and mature performance as the title character, perhaps one of the best I’ve seen given by a child actor, convincingly conveying Caroline’s intelligence, vulnerability and confidence in their identity.

River Lipe-Smith and Amy Landecker
in Caroline.
Credit: Emilio Madrid

The challenges of raising a transgender minor child are compassionately explored. In a bold move, Allen does not make Caroline’s gender issues a source of conflict between Maddie and Rhea. (Their conflict lies in strongly disagreeing over who knows what's best for the child.) Rhea is surprisingly nonplussed when Maddie informs her of the news (Maddie left her parents’ lives well before Caroline was born). “We’re not Republicans,” Rhea almost off-handedly remarks in defense of her total acceptance of her grandchild identifying as trans. At the performance attended, the audience responded with laughter and applause. I didn’t quite buy that Rhea would be so open so quickly to such a difficult adjustment, but this is the play’s only flaw.

Lee Jellinek designed the suggestive, flowing sets which transform from the diner and motel into Rhea’s comfortable suburban home with the aide of Tyler Micoleau’s mood-changing lighting and Cromer’s sensitive, flowing direction. Caroline is an understated, seemingly small play about big emotions, delicately and sensitively handled.

Sept. 30—Nov. 16. MCC Theater at the Robert W. Wilson MCC Theater Space, 511 W. 52nd St., NYC. Running time: 90 mins. with no intermission. mcctheater.org.

Off-B'way Review: Trophy Boys

Louisa Jacobson, Emmanuelle Mattana,
Esco Jouléy, and Terry Hu in
Trophy Boys.
Credit: Valerie Terranova

In a program note for her play Trophy Boys (at MCC Theater), Emmanuelle Mattana observes, “Gender is a scam but it is also a gift. Drag is radical joy and liberation.” She is explaining her choice to cast the four male roles of an elite-school debate team with female, non-binary and non-cis gendered actors. This tactic of drawing the performative aspects of toxic masculinity into relief by opposite casting has been done before—in such productions as Operation Mincemeat, Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine, the long-running Off-Broadway musical The Club, and an all-female production of The Taming of the Shrew in Central Park. Thanks to Mattana’s sharp writing, Danya Taymor’s fierce direction and fearless performances, the choice comes off as more than a mere gimmick but an insightful commentary on sexual political and power plays.

Louisa Jacobson and Terry Hu in
Trophy Boys.
Credit: Valerie Terranova

The play’s premise is explosive enough. The championship debate team must argue in the affirmative for the statement “Feminism has failed women” and they are pitted against their sister school’s all-girl squad. At stake is a prestigious trophy and the boys’ hopes of getting into Ivy League colleges and positions of power and influence. Mattana gets in some witty satire of male privilege as the debaters prep by twisting logic and playing with semantics in order to strengthen their position. This despite their constant affirmation that they love women and are strong allies of progressive causes. Taymor ups the testosterone level by inserting desk-humping dance breaks, unleashing the kids’ ravenous libidos. 

The plot takes a dangerous twist when an anonymous rumor surfaces that one of the boys committed sexual assault. Mattana goes in for the metaphorical kill as the lads abandon all semblance of civility when their dominance is threatened. They turn on each other when it’s revealed each could be guilty of the anonymous accusation. This is a edgy political cartoon, a detonating comic sketch, staged by Taymor like a series of time  bombs, going off several times during the 75-minute running time.

Louisa Jacobson, Emmanuelle Mattana, 
Terry Hu and Esco Jouléy in
Trophy Boys.
Credit: Valerie Terranova

The able cast adds depth to the cartoonish quartet of adolescent narcissists. Playwright Mattana also plays Owen, the entitled chief debater. She endows him with a fierce intelligence, a brittle vulnerability, and an adept ability to manipulate words and the emotions of his teammates. Louisa Jacobson perfectly captures the alpha jock machismo of Jared, the diametric opposite of Marian Brook, the prim, reserved heroine she plays on HBO’s The Gilded Age. (Ironically, Jared is the one who constantly states he loves women even as he plans the downfall and humiliation of his feminine opponents including his girlfriend.) Terry Hu displays the sensitive exterior and the dark interior of David, the low man on the team’s totem pole, struggling to gain the respect of his fellows. Esco Jouléy robustly limns the braggadocio of sports-minded Scott who is concealing more than friendly feelings for Jared.

Matt Saunders’ classroom set captures the staid academic atmosphere and Cha See’s lighting appropriately shifts the mood from raucous rock-infused anarchy (augmented by Fan Zhang’s high-decibel sound design) to ominous and frightening. This is a tight, short show with a powerful message on the still-pervasive problem of gender inequality.

June 24—Aug. 3. MCC Theater Space/Susan and Ronald Frankel Theater, 511 W. 52nd St., NYC. Running time: 75 mins. with no intermission. mcctheater.org.

Off-B'way Reviews: Shit. Meet. Fan.; The Blood Quilt

Debra Messing and Jane Krakowksi
in Shit. Meet. Fan.
Credit: Julieta Cervantes

Robert O’Hara’s scalding new comedy Shit. Meet. Fan. was sold out before it even opened, and it’s riotously funny, as were his previous works Bootycandy and Barbecue, but it’s not really anything new. The hit status can be attributed to a cast stuffed with familiar TV names (such as Neil Patrick Harris, Jane Krakowski, Debra Messing and Constance Wu) and a limited run in a small Off-Broadway space at MCC Theater. The script is based on Paolo Genovese’s 2016 Italian film called Perfect Strangers which has had many remakes in various languages and the basic premise is familiar from numerous American plays. As in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Boys in the Band, a group of friends gather for an evening of cocktails, but a seemingly harmless party game reveals uncomfortable truths and relationships are altered or shattered. The modern twist here is all seven guests are required to leave their cell phones on a table for an hour and whatever messages, texts, calls or email come in must be shared with the entire group.