Chicago Playwright Sinks to Sitcom Level

Chicago theater has achieved a bizarrely inflated reputation over the years, fueled in part by the Second City comedy group, and by Steppenwolf Theatre Company, which emerged from a church basement to produce such stars as John Malkovich, Joan Allen and Gary Sinise. Another part is an underdog status, neither Broadway nor Hollywood, full of well-intentioned small theaters.

The reputation is one thing, but the product is something else: very much hit and miss, with some once-vibrant theaters (such as the Organic Theatre, and possibly Steppenwolf) past their prime.

A fair sample of Chicago theater is at Theatre East now, where “Beau Jest” by Chicagoan James Sherman is being staged. Sherman is resident playwright at one of the town’s leading houses, the Victory Gardens Theatre, which means he rates pretty high in the Windy City.

With “Beau Jest,” though, we have another sign that Chicago theater may be more wind than substance. Barely above the level of a sitcom, Sherman’s comedy takes the creaky premise of a Jewish daughter trying to hide her love of a Gentile from her parents, and places it firmly in the present.

Constant references to “Fiddler on the Roof”--with its own secreted Jew-Gentile matches--only makes Sherman’s plot more anachronistic.

To clear a possible confusion: “Beau Jest” has nothing to do with the Percival C. Wren novel or the William Wellman-Gary Cooper movie, “Beau Geste,” about heroic French Legionnaires. Sherman’s title is a pun, and it hints at the weak-tea level of humor in this overly long three-act.

Although Sarah Goldman (Nan McNamara) has been dating Chris (Curt Collier) for months, she hasn’t told her folks that he isn’t Jewish. Giving in to pressure from parents Miriam and Abe (June Sanders and Jay Gerber) to see her beau, Sarah hires an escort named Bob (Ronald Drewes) to pose as her Jewish boyfriend, “Dr. David Goldberg,” . . . a surgeon, of course.

Because Bob is an out-of-work Chicago theater actor, he plays the role convincingly enough, though he also isn’t Jewish, and Sarah’s therapist brother Joel (Jeff Blumberg) is suspicious.

Sherman milks lots of predictable laughs from Bob verbally inventing a medical practice for himself and muddling his way through the ritualized Passover Seder. Good thing he’s played “Fiddler” before.

Even more predictably, Sherman has Sarah falling in love with Bob, then neatly resolving her mess in Act III with a trite reconciliation between Sarah and her folks, especially Miriam (“Mom, I want to get to know you as a person.”)

This is a tidy TV ending to what should be a much more real and wrenching crisis worthy of farce; such neat conclusions cast doubt on everything that went before them, including the parents’ supposedly firm convictions about a Jewish marriage.

As if that weren’t enough, “Beau Jest” is crudely constructed. Act II virtually repeats Act I, where Bob-as-David must impress and con the Goldmans over dinner. Once is funny; twice is a sign of running out of ideas.

Director Stu Berg’s cast runs short of energy. McNamara, solid in this theater’s “The Triumph of Maeve,” shows virtually no comic knack here, and can’t carry Act III’s emotions.

Drewes projects the put-upon innocent, but with some real smarts and talent. Sanders and Gerber play the stereotypical dominating Jewish parents as written, but bring nothing fresh to the types. Collier barely comes alive until the end, and Blumberg is mostly reduced to looking on.

And because a big deal is made about whether Bob-as-David looks Jewish to Miriam and Abe, it’s fair to note that McNamara is very Anglo-Saxon in appearance. In the context of “Beau Jest’s” Jewish-Gentile squabbling, this is a casting choice that strains credibility as much as the play itself.

DETAILS

* WHAT: “Beau Jest.”

* WHERE: Theatre East, 12655 Ventura Blvd., Studio City.

* WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays. 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends March 31.

* HOW MUCH: $15.

* CALL: (818) 843-5970 or (310) 471-3375.