Gay gezunt un cum gezunt. “Go in health, and return in health,” is the urgent Yiddish wish of Asher Lev’s mother Rivkeh at the doorway to their 1950s Brooklyn apartment. Played by Amy Thone as part of a three-person cast, Rivkeh jumps back and forth between pride and shame as she tries to hold her disintegrating family together.
“My Name is Asher Lev,” an Aaron Posner adaptation of the 1972 novel by Chaim Potok, follows the story of the title character, a young prodigy in the eyes of the art world and a budding heretic in the eyes of his Hasidic parents. Family, tradition, shame, and pride take their turns flowing through the dialogue-heavy play without feeling like a burden: an accomplishment for a play that is morally dense.
This achievement is largely due to the extraordinary three-person cast made up of Bradford Farwell, Connor Neddersen, and Amy Thone. Farwell takes responsibility not only for the large and looming role of Asher’s devout and over-worked father, but also as the magnanimous artist Joseph Kahn. Farwell also makes appearances as the Rebbe, the leader of the New York Jewish community, and as Asher’s gregarious uncle. Thone, meanwhile, occupies the intelligent, yet hang-wringing Rivkeh one moment, while also appearing as the confident, sexy, art-dealing partner of Jacob Kahn the next.
The three actors’ complexity is a stark contrast to the moral binaries of the script: good and evil, tradition and modernity, and the rest of the world versus Orthodox Judaism. The only character to inhabit this middle ground completely is Asher.
The reason why one might still be engaged rather than exhausted after 90 minutes of uncompromising viewpoints is Neddersen’s portrayal of Asher. To be fair, he does get over half the play’s dialogue—mostly in the form of soliloquy—but his ability to play young Asher from 3 years of age to 6 years, all the way up through young adulthood is captivating. Neddersen doesn’t modulate his voice to act the younger versions of Asher, instead making himself smaller by lying on the floor or drawing himself inward, which worked quite effectively; Neddersen plays vulnerable well.
There are few complaints about this production, aside from the sound design, which had some jarring moments. At times there would 1950s era jazz or Jewish song to enhance the setting, only to be cut off abruptly to change scene or allow a character to be heard. Perhaps the impassioned dialogue seemed to merit equally dramatic sound changes, but in the close atmosphere of 12th Avenue Arts’ black box theater it came as somewhat of a distraction.
Nevertheless, the characters ability to deliver each scene as if it were the climax of the show was impressive (and surely required a lot of energy).
“If you want to make the world holy, don’t you want to know what’s in that world first?” asks Jacob Kahn of Asher, regarding his hesitancy to draw and paint crucifixions. The same sentiment is echoed when Asher refuses to paint nudes because his Orthodox faith prevents him. In fact, he is warned against representing any kind of uncomfortable truth about the body. He proceeds to do so anyway, not out of obstinacy or the desire to be seen as a heretic, but out of an absolute need.
The actual climax of the play doesn’t come as a surprise: you could see from 100 miles away that it would be painful. Yet the acting, writing, and even the blocking (terrific thanks to director Sheila Daniels) deliver a heartbreaking ending. While this ending does not necessarily propose a solution to the play’s supposition that orthodox Judaism is incompatible with art, it does paint a detailed picture of the suffering that occurs when two very different ways of life collide.
My Name is Asher Lev by Aaron Posner. Adapted from the novel by Chaim Potok. Directed by Sheila Daniels. Runs April 22 – May 21, 2016 at 12th Ave Arts Mainstage. Tickets $15- $40, available at www.nctc.org. The performance is 90 mins with no intermission .