Humor and Sensitivity Warm This ‘Ballyhoo’

Alfred Uhry’s 1997 Tony Award-winning play, “The Last Night of Ballyhoo,” is quickly becoming a holiday staple. This presentation at the Long Beach Playhouse Studio Theatre doesn’t have the star power of other area productions, but under the sensitive direction of Phyllis B. Gitlin, the cast brings out the petty hurts and underlying love of a Jewish family in the deep South, circa 1939. The sweet and gently humorous chemistry between the young couples overcomes some of the problematic production values.

Adolph Freitag (William B. Jackson) is a bachelor living with his angrily overbearing widowed sister Boo (Lee Anne Moore), her romantically deluded daughter Lala (Amy Bender) and their dingy but good-natured widowed sister-in-law Reba (DeeBye Meyers) and her sensible daughter Sunny (Stephanie Fybel). Lala decorates the Christmas tree with a star, offending her mother’s Jewish sensibilities because, according to Boo, the tree is a holiday decoration. But with a star, it makes them look like Jews trying to be Christian.

Uhry’s play is about reclaiming one’s heritage, set against the first rumblings of World War II, but it’s also about the prejudices that develop in every country. Adolph’s new employee, Joe (Donald Kindle), a Brooklyn Jew, sets off a romantic competition between the girls and a rekindling of religious awareness.

Jay Cramer is delicious as Lala’s prospective suitor, Peachy Weil, playing him as a rural hick with high-class pretensions against the more cosmopolitan roughness of Kindle’s Joe. Fybel is bright and intelligently feisty as Sunny, while Bender catches the fragility of Lala’s Tara fantasies and the dying ways of Old Southern gentility.

Vincent Roca’s scenic design for the Freitag home is homey; less successful is his representation of the train compartment where Joe and Sunny meet and later make up.

The scene transitions could be smoother, but Gitlin has guided a capable cast into a nuanced, loving interpretation of Uhry’s play.

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“The Last Night of Ballyhoo,” Long Beach Playhouse Studio Theatre, 5021 E. Anaheim St., Long Beach. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Jan. 13, 2 p.m. Ends Jan. 19. $15. (562) 494-1014. Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes.

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Jana J. Monji