Jeremy Daniel
Recent events in Gaza might lead some to view Joshua Harmon's fiery, funny and heartbreaking prayer for the French Republic as eerily prophetic, but we shouldn't give the playwright too much credit for his foresight: the play, which opens tonight at the Samuel J .Friedman Theater on Broadway after a premiere premiere sold out Off Broadway in 2022, would have been just as relevant a decade ago – two decades ago, three decades or more – and will probably be just as relevant at any point in the future, the most we will still experience.
The title of the piece comes from a prayer that has been said in French synagogues since the late 19th century. It's a sprawling family comedy that moves effortlessly between the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust and the second decade of the 21st century. Zionism, anti-Semitism and the attempted oppression of Jews throughout history are the themes, and it's unclear how Harmon, director David Cromer and an exemplary cast wring laughs from the themes, but they do wring them out of them.
Winner of almost every off-Broadway award there is, “Prayer” makes a smooth, nearly flawless transition to the Broadway stage in this Manhattan Theater Club production, with most of the original cast retained along with a well-known TV star Anthony Edwards remains in the emergency room.
Edwards plays Patrick Saloman, our narrator and guide through the decades, a secular Jew – actually half-Jewish, he's quick to point out, since his late mother was Catholic – and the brother of Marcelle Saloman Benhamou (Leopoldstadt's amazing Betsy Aidem), a professor who in Paris in 2016, she creates a kind of bridge between the post-war secularism of the Saloman family and the religiosity of her husband's Benhamou family.
Betsy Aidem, Molly Ranson, Jeremy Daniel
When Patrick despises his sister's departure from secularism, he and the entire family are alternately baffled and frightened by the newfound religious fervor displayed by Marcelle's twenty-year-old son Daniel (Aria Shahghasemi), who, to his mother's horror, is attacked in Paris was street for wearing a yarmulke. Rediscovering his roots is one thing, she suggests, but couldn't he also wear a baseball cap when he goes out in public?
Marcelle and Daniel share a well-appointed Paris apartment with husband and father Charles (Nael Nacer), whose family fled anti-Semitism in Algeria in the 1960s, which was superbly and without ostentation by set designer Takeshi Kata (“It's the one “suitcase or the…” coffin,” he summarizes an old decision) and daughter and sister Elodie (Francis Benhamou, who shares the surname with her character, in a star performance).
Molly Ranson, Francis Benhamou, Jeremy Daniel
Elodie is the cantankerous, rebellious and most intellectual truth-teller of them all – think Louis from Angels in America, because both Harmon and Cromer certainly are. It is Elodie who initially forgoes forced politeness when a distant, college-age cousin from America comes to visit. Molly (Molly Ranson) is studying abroad and, despite all the privileges and pretensions of being an American in Paris, hopes to connect with this previously unknown branch of her family (and maybe sleep on their couch). She is simply naive enough to believe that they might actually care about her views on Israel and Palestine.
Soon, Molly and Daniel have established an opposites-attract relationship, a flirtation that will have serious consequences as events unfold. When everything points to the Benhamous packing the suitcase for Israel – a move Daniel had originally suggested – youthful love threatens to hold the young man back.
Nancy Robinette, Daniel Oreskes, Richard Masur, Ari Brand, Ethan Haberfield, Jeremy Daniel
And all of that only in the parts of the play from 2016 to 2017. With effective stagecraft and a first-class script, “Prayer for the French Republic” flashes back to the time between 1944 and 1946, when the grandparents of Marcelle and Daniel (Nancy Robinette and Daniel Oreskes ) desperately waiting for a word from their adult son Lucien (Ari Brand), his wife and their children, who, we quickly learn, have been sent to the camps. Only Lucien and his shocked young son Pierre (Ethan Haberfield in the flashbacks) will find their way home.
As family connections and history lessons become clear to the characters and audience, “Prayer for the French Republic” offers an exciting mix of drama, comedy (Harmon was previously best known for 2013's hilarious Bad Jews) and discourse. Each actor is given more than ample opportunity to shine, with Benhamou getting the lion's share of the laughs as the neurotic Elodie (her one-on-one scene with cousin Molly in a bar plays beat for beat and we're left to deliberately assume (the masterful one). diner scene with Louis and Belize in Tony Kushner's groundbreaking epic), while Robinette, as the heartbroken Grandmother Irma, brings absolute magic to a devastating Tony Awards-made heartbreaker.
Nancy Robinette Jeremy Daniel
Ranson has perhaps the most difficult role of all as the American Molly: the pretentious girl could be downright snotty in worse hands. That's not her. Ranson offers just enough hints of emerging wisdom to make the character's final, tender scenes with Shahghasemi's Daniel compelling and poignant.
Of the new additions to the cast – Shahghasemi, Nacer, Edwards, Oreskes, Haberfield and, in an incredibly moving portrayal of a character whose details shall not be revealed here, the beloved stage and screen veteran Richard Masur – this is only Edwards who is not the original Off-Broadway cast quite equal, although it's hard to say whether that's a question of stage presence or whether it's a matter of finding an immediate approach to the character. In any case, he delivers when it's needed most, and he makes a narrator who is alternately and inevitably affable and stubborn.
With the invaluable assistance of Kata's then and current set design, Amith Chandrashaker's lighting design, Daniel Kluger's music and sound design, and Sarah Laux's spot-on costumes – not to mention Cromer's direction, which easily fits in with his Tony-winning work on The Band's ” Visit,” Edwards and his castmates bring two different, if not always so different, eras to life, telling a compelling story while conveying real intimacy. Prayer for the French Republic asks big questions – about history, about family, about identity – and almost miraculously answers its call.
Title: Prayer for the French Republic
Venue: Samuel J. Friedman Theater on Broadway
Written by: Joshua Harmon
Director: David Cromer
Pour: Betsy Aidem, Francis Benhamou, Ari Brand, Anthony Edwards, Ethan Haberfield, Richard Masur, Nael Nacer, Daniel Oreskes, Molly Ranson, Nancy Robinette, Aria Shahghasemi
Duration: 3 hours (including two short breaks)