All's unfair in love and identity politics in Echo Theater Company's 'One Jewish Boy'

Before “One Jewish Boy,” a play by Stephen Laughton, adjacent had its premiere successful London successful 2018, the playwright and the play were besieged by antisemitic trolling and threats. Jesse, the play’s Jewish quality who is the unfortunate of a hatred crime, would not beryllium astatine each surprised.

“One Jewish Boy,” which is making its West Coast debut successful an Echo Theater Company accumulation astatine Atwater Village Theatre, wrestles with the load of antisemitism successful the narration betwixt a young Jewish antheral and a mixed-race woman. The play begins astatine a marital situation constituent successful 2020 and unwinds each the mode backmost to the couple’s archetypal gathering successful Ibiza successful 2004.

Progressive Londoners Jesse (Zeke Goodman) and Alex (Sharae Foxie) emotion Bjork, getting precocious and calling retired each other’s unsighted spots. They’re beauteous definite they’re chill and enlightened capable to grip their taste differences. But intimacy has a mode of drafting retired latent governmental tensions and making them intensely personal.

Directed by the Echo‘s creator director, Chris Fields, “One Jewish Boy” tightly focuses connected the conversational propulsion and propulsion betwixt Jesse and Alex arsenic they effort to enactment done their points of conflict. The statement betwixt them is handled with admirable complexity, but the characters don’t person capable country to make beyond the cardinal statement of the play.

Jesse, understandably, has go much antiaircraft astir antisemitism since helium was brutally attacked by thugs who singled him retired for being Jewish. This convulsive lawsuit flashes onstage successful the mode of a traumatic memory, with Goodman’s Jesse writhing connected Justin Huen’s impressionistic municipality acceptable arsenic lighting and dependable decorator Matt Richter underscores the hallucinatory quality of the battle with strobe effects. It’s 1 of the fewer breaks successful the play’s moving watercourse of strained lovers’ chat.

Sensing antisemitism connected the near arsenic good arsenic connected the right, Jesse resents being called upon to warrant Israeli overseas policy. Why should he, a “diaspora Jew” from a arrogant enactment of “left-wing Jews,” person to relationship for the surviving conditions of Palestinians erstwhile helium is not a “blatant Zionist” and is vehemently opposed to the Israeli government’s policies? Alex tends to deliberation he’s overreacting, but with antisemitism rising each implicit the world, nary 1 tin person Jesse that he’s being paranoid.

While sympathetic to Jesse’s post-traumatic recovery, Alex worries that he’s letting this 1 incidental specify his life. She besides feels stifled by the mode helium uses his Jewish individuality arsenic a trump card. She’s opposed, for example, to having their lad circumcised. But Jesse, portion pretending to beryllium unfastened to a discussion, signals that this is simply a non-negotiable issue.

Jesse is peculiarly incensed by the antisemitic trope that sees Jews arsenic “powerful, dominating and privileged” and truthful not worthy of the protections of different marginalized groups. Alex mightiness beryllium much delicate to a critique aimed successful her absorption if Jesse weren’t truthful speedy to place the oppression she experiences connected a regular ground arsenic a pistillate of color.

Laughton efficaciously embodies and personalizes the profoundly felt dialectic betwixt Alex and Jesse. If Alex has a spot much credibility, not being arsenic intractable successful her positions, some person a inclination to travel disconnected arsenic disagreeable successful their incessant bickering and self-righteousness.

But characters successful play don’t person to beryllium likable. They do, however, person to beryllium convincing. And present is wherever “One Jewish Boy” mislaid me. There’s thing forced successful the scenic snapshots of the mates laughing, dancing and romancing. The actors themselves look perpetually connected a archetypal day — and not conscionable with each different but besides with their characters.

The play struggles to find momentum. Part of this is simply a effect of the play’s tricky chronology. Part of this is the sluggishly incremental quality of Laughton’s penning that filters everything done seesaw dialogue. And portion of this is simply a accumulation that fails to infuse the enactment with the indispensable theatrical fire.

The struggle astatine the bosom of “One Jewish Boy” is vast, but the humble standard of the absorption seems measured for TV viewing.