Stage Review: Holiday fare has a family focus
Fate, in the persons of one recently departed Jewish grandmother and a loopy delivery man, brings two lonely people together on Christmas Eve in the West Coast premiere of “Handle With Care,” a romantic comedy by Jason Odell Williams at the Colony Theatre in Burbank.
The context for Williams’ funny and soulful play, visualized by the production’s set, sound and lighting designers (David Potts, Drew Dalzell and Jared A. Sayeg, respectively) through secular Christmas carols between acts, strategic snowfall, strings of Christmas lights and a wreath, is not the holiday itself, but the power of family, ritual and tradition in forming the ties that bind.
It’s a snowy Dec. 24 in a rundown motel tourist stop in the Virginia town of Goodview and Ayelet (Charlotte Cohn), a young Israeli woman with limited English, is railing at Terrence (Jeff Marlow), a dim, but well-meaning local employee for a DHL-type package delivery service. Unable to communicate through his dual strategies of speaking English very slowly and very loudly, Terrence has called his friend Josh to Ayelet’s motel room to help.
Josh, a young American professor, is Jewish, after all, and so undoubtedly learned to speak “Jewish” in Sunday school while preparing for his “Hare Krishna,” reasons Terrence offers in clueless sincerity. (Marlow, a member of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, mines laughter with deft strokes as the play’s dunderheaded comic relief, but deepens the character with an authentic sweetness. Terrence’s pride in his uniform — bright yellow-and-red shirt, khaki shorts and winter parka, courtesy of costume designer Dianne K. Graebner —is downright endearing.)
Through his dimly remembered Hebrew lessons, an English phrase book and much gesturing, Josh (Tyler Pierce) learns that Ayelet’s Grandma Edna — her beloved, maddening Safta — died eight hours previously, and with the authorities’ red tape taken care of, Ayelet intends to accompany her grandmother’s body to the airport and fly home to Israel for the burial. Unfortunately, after the box containing Edna’s body was loaded into his delivery truck, Terrence left the keys in the ignition with the engine running when he stopped for gas. Both the truck and Edna are now missing. Fearing for his job, Terrence won’t report it to the police until Josh convinces him that he has no other option, and the (offstage) hunt for Edna is on.
But what brought Ayelet and her grandmother to America and to this dingy, out-of-the-way Virginia motel in the first place? Flashback to the day before, and to the then-very much alive Edna (the wonderful Marcia Rodd), who confesses that she had planned this unconventional road trip to give Ayelet a new outlook on life and potential romance. What Edna doesn’t reveal (until a later flashback), is that she has another reason for coming to Goodview. It involves a Food Lion grocery store, an old love from 1948 and an unexpected connection to the present. One unsubtle clue: a promotional poster, “Virginia is for Lovers,” hanging near the bed in the motel room.
Although Josh, the son of a mixed-faith marriage who grew up celebrating both Hannukah and Christmas, considers himself “Jewish light,” while Ayelet’s observance of her faith is synonymous with love and family, the two are clearly made for each other.
With a hint of improbable far-seeing on the late Edna’s part, a few exchanges referencing Frank Capra’s iconic film, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and Terrence’s childlike conviction that things are meant to be, the play conveys a genuine, and certainly seasonally appropriate, appreciation for the value of human connection.
The accomplished stage and screen pros, including Rodd, stalwart of stage, TV and film; and Cohn, who reprises her Off Broadway role as Ayelet — and who, by the way, is a former lieutenant in the Israeli Army — nicely balance the play’s surface, quick-fire banter and underlying emotional resonance. Karen Carpenter, a veteran theater-maker of some note, who directs this offbeat love story with a suitably light touch and an awareness of its warm heart, never allows its humor to eclipse the reality of love and loss. (Carpenter, currently the interim artistic director of the William Inge Center for the Arts, directed the play’s 2013 Off Broadway premiere.)
What: “Handle With Care”
Where: Colony Theatre, 555 N. Third St. (Burbank Town Center Mall adjacent), Burbank.
When: 8 p.m. Thursday through Friday; 3 and 8 p.m. Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday. (Dark Thanksgiving week.) Ends Dec. 14.
Admission: $20 to $49.
More info: (818) 558-7000, Ext. 15, www.colonytheatre.org
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LYNNE HEFFLEY writes about theater and culture for Marquee.