In fact, “Ballyhoo” and “Rosensweig” share more than style: Both plays deal with issues of self-hatred and denial within their respective Jewish upper-class milieus. Lala Levy, played by Sarah Leaffer has just added a star to top the decorations. Frankly, the family doesn't quite know what to make of Joe and he's a bit perplexed by them a well. John Lee Beatty’s parlor-room set and Jane Greenwood’s costumes couldn’t be more efficient or pretty, and, in the case of one of Greenwood’s dresses, a better punchline. Read Next: Marge Champion, Dancer, Actor and Model for ‘Snow White,’ Dies at 101, Bill Maher, Larry David and Others Remember the Improv, 20th Century Fox Films to Get Stage Treatment, Outfest Pics Reflect Changes in LBGT Community, Jerry Jeff Walker, Singer-Songwriter Known for ‘Mr. He and the understated Gayheart have a lovely moment on the couch where they first fall in love. Also fine is Mark Kassen’s Joe, who, fortunately, is not straddled with one of the production’s all-purpose Southern accents. The year is 1939, but for Uhry’s well-off Jewish assimilationists, far-off reports of Germany’s threat take a distant backseat to Ballyhoo, Atlanta’s annual holiday — Christmas holiday — ball for the young Jewish society set. He's the owner of Dixie Bedding. While Boo as played by Gail Bray is incisive and confident, Reba Freitag played by Julie Dixon is a bit dittsy and frequently funnier. The Last Night of Ballyhoo was first performed at Atlanta's Alliance Theatre and found its way to the Broadway stage in 1997 at the Helen Hayes Theatre. Re-assembling the “Driving Miss Daisy” crew — Uhry, Ivey and director Ron Lagomarsino — “Ballyhoo” inflicts no sophomore curse on the team, and indeed is a more than worthy successor to the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Daisy.” Using the manner and technique of boulevard comedy as its backdrop, “Ballyhoo” addresses some weighty issues with the same combination of ease and purpose that marked Wendy Wasserstein’s “The Sisters Rosensweig” some seasons back. What can you expect from a playwright, who, in his “Miss Daisy,” found some wonderful character arc as an old white woman who went from refusing her black chauffeur to “pass water” to letting him spoon-feed her pie? Boo is his sister and Reba was the wife of his brother Simmon. Adolph describes Joe as coming from East of Elbe. In a household where the only concession to its own Judaism is a debate over whether to place a star atop the Christmas tree, Ballyhoo, with its careful appropriation of all things genteel and gentile, is a major event. Proving opposites attract, Joe and Sunny fall for each other, while Lala is left with an insensitive lout of a college boy, Peachy Weil (Stephen Largay). Values that will become even more sharply considered in the dark years to come. More than a few wedding announcements came on those evenings. A long rivalry between the two girls comes to a head with the introduction of the play’s gentleman caller, Joe Farkas (Paul Rudd), a handsome young Brooklyn Jew who’s a favored employee of Adolph’s at the bedding plant. As the world and their isolated corner of it are about to change forever, these characters will need all the grace and strength they can find, and Uhry offers it gladly. Adolph sends Joe to meet her at the train. As all-purpose years go, it’s right up there with 1929. Read Next: ‘What the Constitution Means to Me’ Review: Heidi Schreck Gives Audiences Even More Reasons to Vote, Jerry Jeff Walker, Singer-Songwriter Known for ‘Mr. Choose to receive some or all of the updates from Indiana Public Media Arts & Music: Indiana Public Media is the home of WFIU Public Radio WTIU Public Television, including your favorite programming from NPR and PBS. The man of the house is Adolph Frietag. To Joe the Freitag Levy's don't seem Jewish at least not in the way that he's used too. Director Lagomarsino orchestrates all the players with dexterity, just as he does the play’s alternating movements of comedy and pathos. She's bubbling over with the excitement of the premiere and is thrilled that Clark Gable may be as little as five miles away. Play ends on a lovely, misty note: A brief coda could be interpreted either as real or simply imagined by Sunny. Home for the holidays — she’s on break from Wesleyan College — is Sunny Freitag (Arija Bareikis), Reba’s blond, Aryan-featured daughter, as absent of Jewish markers as Lala is not. Perlman’s nasty Boo is a needed respite among all this sentimental goo. This production was not all that it could have been. The Jewish Theatre of Bloomington's production of Alfred Uhry's The Last Night of Ballyhoo plays Dec 2-10 in the Rose Firebay of the Ivy Tech John Waldron Arts Center. Only 99 pages in length yet packing a punch, I rate this play 4.5 stars. Boo just throws the tinsel on in clumps. Lala flits from one artistic pursuit to another and currently she claims to be working on a novel called Though Your Sins be Scarlet. And the same can be said for this winning new play and the meticulous production it's been given. Other than the looks department, however, they don’t really know they’re Jews. What doesn’t come across in synopsis is the play’s abundant humor. When the report comes back that the tuxedo and the dancing shoes are both gone, she's exuberant. Everything falls into place in the beautifully appointed, uppercrust Atlanta home of Alfred Uhry's "The Last Night of Ballyhoo," right down to the Jewish household's traditional Christmas tree.

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