The Last Yiddish Speaker

Postcard Review by Caroline Russell-King

Show – The Last Yiddish Speaker

Playwright/composer – Deborah Zoe Laufer

Production Company/Theatre space – (community) Chai Life Productions / Temple B’Nai Tikvah

Length – 1 Act, 1 hour 45 minutes (no intermission)

Genre/s – Fantasy Drama

Premise – Awaiting passports, a father and daughter have fled New York (after it was cleansed of people of colour, immigrants, homosexuals, and Jews) to a small Christian community to hide in plain sight but then risk their safety by harboring an unknown, long-lost, member of the tribe.

Why this play? Why now? – This play imagines a USA where fascism wins and it’s terrifying.

Curiosities – I haven’t read the script, so I wondered if the huge cross was supposed to fall off the wall as a symbolic moment or whether some ghost was saying “not in my synagogue”. Why was there not a playwright photo and bio in the program? While this play has deep resonance with the Jewish community, I wonder how it could be marketed and seen by a wider audience?

Notable moment – The ending.

Notable writing – Laufer has crafted a beautifully written play. The script is well balanced with moments of tension, poignancy, and laughter. As much as I support new work, I hope it becomes passe soon -- for all the right reasons.

Notable performances – To be able to take three of the four actors - one with high school experience, one who has had a 25-year break, and one eighty-year-old who has never been on stage before and have them deliver the quality of performances is quite a feat but not surprising in the hands of the director. Reva Faber, playing the centuries old Chava, steals the show.

Notable design/Production – The production values are not the star of the show, the set is unremarkable and someone kept knocking the lighting tree, which was distracting, but the sound design by Byron Paul Hynes was spot on.

Notable direction – Zelda Dean is one of the finest teaching directors around. As a past co-founder of Beth Isreal Players and Artistic Director of Bema Productions she is the most qualified director of Jewish plays in Western Canada and Chai Life should be very happy with the production.

One reason to see this show – You’ll laugh; you’ll cry.