Two new Off-Broadway productions on the smaller stages of two major theater companies have large ambitions but offer only tired tropes we’ve seen too many times before: the musical Cornelia Street and Anna Ziegler’s The Wanderers at Roundabout Theater Company’s Laura Pels stage. The latter does have a modicum of genuine emotion and insight, but too much of the plot, acting, and direction are stagey and stilted.
The Wanderers starts off with an intriguing premise. Ziegler follows the relationship vagaries of two disparate couples, seemingly only linked by their Jewish faith, crumbling unions and Brooklyn residence. Abe and Sophie are secular Jews, each an introspective writer and drifting apart. Abe, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, is wracked with Philip Roth-like guilt over his lack of devoutness and feels alienated from his wife. So much so that he begins a clandestine Internet correspondence with Julia Cheever, a famous film actress, after she attends one of his readings. The biracial Sophie is equally angst-ridden. Filled with self-doubt after her first book vanished without a trace, she is blocked in her creative and romantic life. (Apart from a brief mention of bearing the twin painful legacies of the Holocaust and slavery, Sophie’s racial identity is not explored.)
Abe and Sophie’s scenes are alternated with those of Schmuli and Esther, who follow the ultra-conservative tenets of Orthodox Judaism. After the birth of three children, Esther is chafing under the constrains of the patriarchal system. Gradually Ziegler reveals the deeper connections between these two couples. To state any further details would spoil the evening, but suffice it to say that all is not as it appears. Ziegler tackles weighty issues such as the clash of fiction and reality, the place of faith in modern life, and how to balance community dictates with individual passions. She delivers some piercing insights, but the characterizations and plotlines feel forced.
While both story arcs have more than a touch of the melodramatic, the segments with the Orthodox couple come across as more honest. Lucy Freyer captures Esther’s desperate yearning for a life of learning and diversity outside the narrow confines of her community’s insular existence. As the traditional Schmuli, Dave Klasko wisely goes beyond the stereotype of the heritage-bound, domineering husband infuriated by a rebellious spouse. He intensely expresses Schmuli’s conflict between his love for Esther and his deep respect for centuries of religious stability.
Both Eddie Kaye Thomas as Abe and Sarah Cooper as Sophie appear uncomfortable and artificial, as if they haven’t found their characters’ centers yet. This could be because Ziegler has given simple, direct dialogue to Esther and Schmuli and her lines for Abe and Sarah make them sound like they are narrating audiobooks, it’s that mannered and writerly. Marion Williams’ book-stuffed set accentuates the literary demeanor of the pair, as do the projected supertitles of chapter headings, as if the play were a novel.
As the glamorous movie star, Katie Holmes is equally two-dimensional, though it’s not entirely her fault since her character is an amalgam of cliches. Director Barry Edelstein fails to brings the two worlds together, though his staging is smoothly paced and Kenneth Posner’s lighting aids in the many transitions.
