'Ballyhoo': religious rigamarole and friendly Freitags

"Jewish Christmas trees don't have stars," argues Mrs. Beula ("Boo") Levy (Vanessa Wolf, BR '00) in Nick Bagley's, ES '00, production of The Last Night of Ballyhoo by Alfred Uhry. Just why the wealthy, Jewish Freitags are not the least bit mindful of the large "Hanukkah bush" squatting in their living room is the subject of the play, which, according to producer John McWilliams, MC '00, is merely a chapter in Uhry's "project of dramatizing the Jewish experience in the American South." The backdrop is 1939 Atlanta—Hitler and Clark Gable share newspaper headlines as Poland is invaded and the film version of Gone with the Wind opens. Laden with such uneasy juxtapositions, Ballyhoo is a sober drawing room comedy in which the characters confront the two-headed monster of being Jewish among intolerant Christians, and who is taking whom to the Ballyhoo dance.

KATHERINE ALDRICH/YH As Jewish as Hannukah Harry: Vanessa Wolf, BR '00, and Eileen Gibbon, MC '00.

The play takes place in the days before Christmas and the dance party on the last night of Ballyhoo festivities. The overbearingly manipulative and socially hyper-conscious Boo—"the Jewish Tallulah Bankhead"—scrambles to find a date for her daughter, the teenybopper-minded Lala Levy (Eileen Gibson, MC '00), who dropped out of college after she was rejected from the popular sorority. The other adults in the family provide well-timed quips and insights: Adolph Freitag (Evan Leatherwood, BR '01), the bachelor brother, and provider of the family, bemoans Hitler's actions in Poland but acquiesces to the social injustice he suffers in Atlanta; Reba Freitag (Erika MacDonald, SY '02), wife of the deceased eldest Freitag brother, provides naïve kindness that complements Boo's aggressiveness. The family has achieved a delicate mental state in which they balance acute awareness of their inferior social status as Jews with their daily activities within upper-class society. Though they do not try to hide their Jewishness, they conform to their Christian surroundings as much as possible.

These unacknowledged tensions are intensified and drawn out by the relationship between Joe Farkas (Bagley), a Brooklyn Jew who works for Adolph, and Sunny Freitag (Kate McGovern, MC '03), Reba's daughter who is home from Wellesley. Though both young and energetic, Joe and Sunny personify various polarities: he is a working-class Yankee boy who embraces his Jewish heritage, she a wealthy Southern girl who undervalues her Jewish-ness. These conflicts threaten their budding romance, especially when Joe finds out that even within the Jewish community there is a stratification between Jews of German descent (the Freitags) and "the other kind" (East Europeans such as Joe).

Contradictions and complications are what make Ballyhoo's characters believable and engaging, and often the subplots and peripheral conflicts are more interesting than the overarching theme of "Jewish identity in a Christian world." There's the internal family rivalry between Boo and Reba, which is pretty one-sided since Reba is too oblivious and content to be riled by Boo's remarks. Rivalry is more clearly manifested in Sunny and Lala—the former a sensible college girl whose deceased father is revered, and the latter a juvenile social butterfly whose father is also dead, but forgotten. Lala laments on how Sunny stole "her tragedy" by arriving at her father's funeral in a new outfit. Boo and Lala's often self-imposed inferiority complexes parallel and shed light on the family's second-class citizen mentality.

By contrast, Joe and Sunny's direct confrontation of Jewish identity feels more contrived. Their relationship is saccharine enough that its forays into serious discussion and ideological hostility seem heavyhanded and inconsistent. Bagley's Joe is charming and likable, though at some points the performance seems rigid and slightly over-rehearsed. McGovern's Sunny has compelling moments that shine through somewhat staid lines. The actor's onstage chemistry wavers between enchanting and overdone.

Theater

The Last Night of Ballyhoo Written by Alfred Uhry Directed by Nick Bagley Produced by John McWilliams Fri., Mar. 24, 8 p.m., Sat., Mar. 25, 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Nick Chapel

Both MacDonald and Leatherwood successfully add emotive complexity to supporting characters that could very easily be one-dimensional and predictable; both show a comfortable grace onstage. Wolf plays Boo-the-dominatrix with authority, making her anguish simultaneously poignant and despicable. Similarly, Gibson is able to evoke sympathy. And Nathaniel Garret, ES '00, who plays Peachy Weil, the Southern Jewish carrot-top who has the honor of taking Lala to Ballyhoo, is appropriately obnoxious.

The Last Night of Ballyhoo sports an entertaining cast of characters and many moments of troubled laughter, but the success of its more lighthearted aspects dampens the more serious examination of the play's central issue. Yet perhaps this is an unfair complaint, because the production is at its best when it delights inthe Freitag family rather than dwelling on the status of Jews in mid-century Christian Atlanta.

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