By LORNA CHEROT LITTLEWAY
TWO OF US PRODUCTIONS opened its 2024 season with “A Shayna Maidel” by Barbara Lebow at the Copake Grange, March 22-24. It is a timely choice. The story about an intergenerational Jewish family puts a human face on immigration. Today several citizenries from Haiti, Ukraine, Palestine and Latin American nations escape their homelands to seek relief elsewhere.
The Weiss/Pechenik family plans to flee Poland for America during the rise of Adolf Hitler and the spread of Nazism bolstered by a campaign to annihilate the Jews by degradation and depredation, family isolation and separation, starvation and work camps. The family’s plans are disrupted when older daughter, Lusia (Constance Lopez), comes down with scarlet fever. She and her mother (Deborah Lombardi) stay behind while younger sister Rachel (Karissa Payson) and their father, Morcechai (Kenneth Goldfarb), make the transatlantic journey to America’s New York City. The story centers on the sisters’ reunion, in 1946, after World War II.
“A Shayna Maidel” is a memory play. It opens with a flashback Prologue to the 1880s, when after the birth of Morcechai, the family flees from hostile mobs and advancing soldiers.
In Act 1 the audience is transported to the apartment of the younger sister, now known as Rose White. She and her father have thrived. He is a respected Brooklyn businessman and she, an independent young woman. Rose learns from her father that Lusia will be arriving within the week and that she must give up her room and bed to Lusia. This news overwhelms Rose, who left Poland at age 4, and has no memory of her sister or mother.
However Lusia arrives earlier than expected and the sisters decide not to tell their father so they can use the time to become reacquainted.
They are a stark contrast in appearance, speech and mannerisms. Rose is a robust young woman, stylishly dressed, tastefully made up and bejeweled, living in her own one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. Lusia is thin, haggard looking and drably dressed. Lusia speaks with a pronounced Yiddish accent while Rose speaks without a trace of her homeland. When they share a meal Lusia breaks off tiny bits and nibbles. Rose exhorts her sister “to eat up” and Lusia reminds Rose that a person can get sick from overeating too – an ongoing refrain from Lusia and Morcechai.
In turn the bounty of food, multiple towels for washing, and a gift of a new nightgown overwhelms Lusia. Act I is a delightful compilation of scenes in which Rose becomes a mother to Lusia feeding her, taking her to movies and otherwise helping Lusia to acclimate to America. Lusia listens to the radio to improve her English and visits regularly an Immigrant Service Agency to review the posted list of new arrivals in search of her beloved Duvid (Matthew Leinung).
There are flashbacks to Poland where Lusia and best friend, Hanna (Leigh Fisher), laugh, sing and share girlish dreams of their futures. (In America Lusia’s face is always stoic.) There are also tender scenes between Lusia and Duvid as he plans for a future in America. Lusia reminds Duvid, “Between Russia and Germany we are stuck here.”
Lopez is outstanding as Lusia shifting easily from Yiddish to Americanized speech. Payson is an excellent foil as Rose, flustered yet determined to make her sister feel at home. Fisher is tender and playful as Lusia’s best friend. Goldfarb is gently commanding as Morcechai, the father determined to demonstrate his fitness and stamina as a man “in his 70s” and to reunite his family.
There is an especially poignant scene between father and daughter, where they both read from pocket size memo books. Morcechai reads a litany of names of relatives left behind and Lusia reads back their status as missing but mostly dead, with the dates when and the names of the concentration camps where they died.
Act 2 is a roller coaster of emotions. Lusia is better dressed, though conservatively. She has not shed her babushka. Lusia wears very little make-up, only a light shade of lipstick, and dons no jewelry. She has embraces one luxury – bubble baths.
In a series of flashbacks the audience learns that Russian Forces have liberated the family’s Polish village and Lusia urges her mother to seize the moment with her and move to America. “The world will be better. Love will be more. Hate will be less.” But her mother wants to stay in hopes of a better future for Poland, and argues, “If America had been God’s plan” for them then “Lusia would not have gotten sick” and they would have moved to America as a family before the war. In another flashback, Duvid ironically explains to Lusia that he lost track of her after the liberation.
Lusia also dreams that Hanna has come to America and she shows off sister Rose’s apartment with the indoor bathroom and a tub as big as a “swimming pool,” a kitchen with new appliances – an electric stove and a machine that washes clothes and dishes – and where garbage is set out back and miraculously removed by the following morning. Luisa also warns Hanna that there are no chickens in Brooklyn and “too much pavement” for a garden.
In another post liberation flashback Lusia and Hanna stumble across a grand house that is empty. They can see through the windows cabinets filled with food. Hanna wants to enter the house but Lusia refuses because it was probably “German owned.” Hanna dismisses Lusia’s reluctance, enters the house, gorges herself and soon becomes sick. Ultimately Hanna succumbs to typhoid.
In the final scenes, Morcechai shares a box of photos and other mementos from the family’s early life before fleeing to America. Among the items is Rose’s baby spoon and a picture of their mother, when she was 16, a “shayna maidel” (translation: pretty girl), Morcechai calls her and pockets the photo. Also, Lusia reports that she has met a woman who tells her that Duvid has recently arrived in New York City. When they meet at Rose’s apartment, the love between them is evident.
The final flashback is a family gathering to celebrate Duvid and Lusia’s engagement. That scene fades into the reality of the foursome – Morcechai, Lusia, Duvid and Rose – celebrating the unification of what remains of the family in America.
Memory plays present the challenge of clarity when characters speak and scenes are set in the past and in the present. The challenge is especially acute when the venue is a small stage such as the Copake Grange facility. Director Stephen Sanborn meets that challenge with skill and aplomb. The stage is partitioned into five areas. Offstage house right and left are primarily used for flashbacks. The main stage is divided into three areas: bedroom, living room and dining room. In the wings offstage left is the bathroom and offstage right is the kitchen. The entrance is located upstage left.
The apartment is modestly and tastefully furnished. It reads care and aspiration from its occupant. The costumes underscore the difference between old world and new, poverty and success as well as tradition. Duvid’s mismatched jacket and slacks are too big emphasizing the hardship and lack of food before setting out for America. The Big Band soundtrack emanating from the radio is brassy, bright, gay and suggests possibilities.
The actors’ performances are heartfelt. Several audience members shed tears at the play’s end.
