Adam Baum And The Jew Movie
It’s 1946 Hollywood and movie mogul Samuel Baum is racing to get his Jew movie made before a rival studio makes their Jew movie because, as he sees it, there can only be one Jew movie a year. He feels he has the edge because the other studio is using a Jewish writer, Moss Hart, while he is using a Gentile, Garfield Hampson, Jr.. The idea is to not make the movie too Jewish, lest it alienate a national audience. But his strategy has backfired. Hampson is a writer with “a conscience” who has made the script (about anti-Semitism in America) a bit too direct.
Samuel wants the anti-Semites to be not so mean and not so rich, the Jews to be not so meek. In order to give Hampson a glimpse at a real-life Jewish family, he invites the writer to his son Adam’s bar mitzvah where the Gentile’s idea of what it means to be Jewish and the Jew’s idea of what it means to be American clash somewhat violently. The Hayworth Theatre gives us good acting, good directing, great design elements, decent writing, and a professional production, so what’s not to like? I’ll tell you.
Dare I say the play wasn’t long enough? The period and setting of the play are so rich with background, undercurrents, and looming disaster, some of which come through in the play, that I felt cheated by the playwright, Daniel Goldfarb. He came so close to baring the post-holocaust, pre-blacklist capitalist Jewish-American soul, a product of centuries of persecution and a need to fit in without standing out, but stopped short of a real donnybrook (hey, I’m part Irish) of ideas and understanding. It seems the play itself suffers from the same confines Samuel wants to impose on his movie.
Richard Kind makes a suitably conflicted Samuel Baum, but he deserves a stronger foil than Hamish Linklater’s annoyingly quirky Garfield Hampson, Jr. Gregory Mikurak makes Adam Baum a son anyone can be proud of. The sets, lights, and costumes are beautiful in their period clutter and Hollywood longtimer Paul Mazursky’s direction is evident in that the play moves so smoothly we don’t notice it. On a personal note, I think it is unnecessarily cruel to mention Scotch so early in a performance and not have at least a tumbler of the stuff waiting for the critic at intermission.
Adam Baum and the Jew Movie plays Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8pm and Sundays at 7pm through July 20, 2008, with no performances on July 4-7. The Hayworth Theatre, 2509 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90057 $25-$30