Buffalo Theater: Laufer play makes its WNY premiere

By Lona LaChiusa
(Image above, L-R: Sarah (Sam Prezioso), Paul (Christian Brandjes) and John (Devon Klumpp)

Deborah Zoe Laufer’s The Last Yiddish Speaker is a critically acclaimed and thought-provoking play currently premiering in Buffalo at the Jewish Repertory Theatre of Western New York. It asks the question, what if the Jan. 6 insurrection ended differently and Christian White Nationalists began a white supremacist regime in the United States where several minorities and dissenters are rounded up, their fates unclear, and women are no longer allowed to go to college?

Set in May of 2029 in a rural upstate New York home, this dystopian world imagines secular Jews, a father and daughter duo, living closeted lives as Christians in this small town in order to escape from the purging of cities like New York. Think Our Town meets The Handmaid’s Tale meets The Diary of Anne Frank. The play is roughly 90 minutes long, but the societal implications it explores loom large.

Paul, played by Christian Brandjes, is the father going along to get along, in an effort to keep his only child alive and safe.  Sam Prezioso is Sarah (who goes by Mary), his head-strong  and intelligent teenage daughter, stifled by the constraints of a life in hiding and seeking at first subtle and then outright rebellious acts of protest to her father’s chagrin. As Paul and Sarah,  Brandjes and Prezioso craft a believable, real and nuanced bond as father and daughter. The tension between them is beautifully built and the terror of their circumstance is palpable.

Sarah’s unsuspecting boyfriend John is played by Devon Klumpp. John is a local teen inspector torn between his duty to the oppressive regime, the only world he’s ever really known,  and his deepening feelings for Sarah.  It’s a fascinating character and Klumpp plays him as utterly sympathetic and likeable, if not naive and blinded by youthful passions and misunderstandings of the toxic world he is perpetuating.  Prezioso and Klumpp also have a lovely chemistry together.

Sarah and Paul’s carefully constructed life is disrupted by Aunt Chava, a mysterious, 1,000-year-old woman who arrives at their doorstep speaking Yiddish, clearly an allegorical character and a touch of magical realism representing Jewish history, trauma and resilience.

The play would work even without the presence of this character, but Aunt Chava is an injection of humor and, ultimately, generational pain. Arin Lee Dandes channels a much older version of herself as Aunt Clara and imbues her with impishness, bawdiness and dignity. She is a catalyst for Paul and Sarah’s soul searching as they reckon with who they are and what each has ultimately compromised about themselves to survive.

With skillful direction by Kyle LoConti and a first-rate production team of designers, every inch of the small black box space is used effectively to create the world of these characters, from haunting stringed instruments to the jeers of an offstage mob to an ultra feminine prom dress and an overhead kitchen light. The audience is transported by these carefully designed details. The Last Yiddish Speaker is playing now through Nov. 22 at the Maxine and Robert Seller Theatre (JCC Benderson Family Building, 2640 North Forest Road, Getzville).