Conveying the Truths of ‘A Shayna Maidel’

Childhood friends, separated for decades, might meet in memory, and sometimes touchingly in person as adults. It’s an even more pungent moment when siblings meet after being separated for years. That’s the situation at the core of Barbara Lebow’s “A Shayna Maidel,” now at the Vanguard Theatre in Fullerton.

The space of years between parting and reuniting is always a question mark, and much more so for Rose Weiss, an energetic young New Yorker whose father brought her to America during the late 1930s, and her older sister Luisa, who stayed with their mother in Nazi Poland and disappeared into the concentration camps.

After the war, in 1946, Rose’s father, Mordechai, arrives at Rose’s flat to announce that Luisa has been found, will be arriving in a few weeks and will live with Rose.

It’s this renewal of a sibling relationship that’s at the heart of the play, and in this production that rebirth is gentle and tender and poignant, as Luisa’s emotional flashbacks fill in missing details in the familial fabric, and Rose’s anxious desire to help sweeps them closer.

This is a difficult play to stage in a small black box theater such as the Vanguard, but director Laurie T. Freed makes intelligent use of the space, making believable the living room, bedroom and dinette of Rose’s flat. Her staging is interesting visually, and her insights into the intent of the script are right on target.

She is particularly attuned to several scripted pauses when a thought, an emotion or a memory is allowed to sink into the viewer’s consciousness. The big problem lies in letting most of these pauses go on too long, past the moment of effectiveness.

Freed’s casting is impeccable, particularly in the case of Jill Cary Martin as Luisa. From her first shy moments, suitcase in hand, to that moment when her lost husband, David, turns up, Martin’s is a luminous, inventive and insightful portrait, with a wide range of detail and discerning intent. She is believable as the lost refugee, as the effervescent teenager and as the loving wife who make up Luisa’s image.

Sarah Lang is close behind Martin in her ability to live within her character and bring her to life.

Tony Grande, as the stern, iron-willed Mordechai, hits all the right notes in his characterization, but rarely seems to get much below the surface of this complex and stoic man.

As Luisa’s husband, both in their teen years and as newly reunited partners, Frank Romeo is quite effective, as are Kelly Dunn as Luisa’s girlhood buddy and Sally Leonard as her mother, both of whom were lost in the camps.

In spite of its small flaws, this is an honest, sincere and theatrically viable staging of Lebow’s script, bringing home the devastating sense of loss of that shameful moment in our century.

* “A Shayna Maidel,” Vanguard Theatre, 699A S. State College Blvd., Fullerton. Thursday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 5 p.m. Ends June 6. $13-$15. (714) 526-8007. Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes.

Sarah Lang: Rose Weiss

Tony Grande: Mordechai Weiss

Jill Cary Martin: Luisa Weiss Pechenik

Frank Romeo: David Pechenik

Kelly Dunn: Hanna

Sally Leonard: Mama-Liba Weiss

A Vanguard Theatre Ensemble production of the drama by Barbara Lebow. A Directed by Laurie T. Freed. Scenic/lighting design: Bryan Lucas. Sound: K. Robert Eaton. Costumes: David Temple. Dialect coach: Edith Goodman. Stage manager: Julie Stormont.