Cary Gitter’s throwback intimate comedy, about an Orthodox Jew and their Italian-American neighbor, is variety of sweet and sort of clunky.
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Angie is single and italian-American; Seth is just a divorced Orthodox Jew. She lives in apartment 4C; he could be down the hallway in 4J. She’s a curator at a Chelsea gallery; he operates a shop that is knish the Lower East Side. She discovers motivation at the Metropolitan Museum; he translates an obscure writer that is yiddish enjoyable.
You’ve guessed it: we have been in a intimate comedy, “The Sabbath Girl, ” and its own protagonists are fated to be mated, as Cole Porter place it back 1957 (several things never change). But as it is popular onscreen, his play, at 59E59 Theaters, can’t escape the cliches and clunky setups that burden rom-com as much as they fuel it while it is refreshing to see the young writer Cary Gitter unabashedly dive into a genre as rare onstage.
Angie (Lauren Annunziata) and Seth (Jeremy Rishe) meet — adorable, obviously — as he asks her to make on their air-conditioner: It’s Friday night so that as an observant jew, he can’t do so himself. In no time, Angie becomes Seth’s bemused “Shabbos goy. ”
It takes a bit longer, nonetheless, to allow them to understand they have been each other’s individual.
Angie is sidetracked by Blake (Ty Molbak), an artist that is hunky wanting to attract to her gallery, undeterred by the truth that he’s the types of man whom prefaces a declaration with “Here’s exactly exactly what we see in your heart. ” As for Seth, he must overcome the objections of their sis, Rachel (Lauren Singerman), that is appalled that he’s also thinking about dating outside their faith.
“The Sabbath Girl” stocks a whole lot because of the 1988 film “Crossing Delancey, ” including an immersion in Jewish faith and tradition, an arty feminine lead who hesitates between a fancy suitor and a modest working man and also the influential existence of the grandmother that is benevolent.
In Angie’s case it sophia that is’sAngelina Fiordellisi), whom keeps reminding her granddaughter, cheerily but insistently, that being an effective expert is all well and good, but a woman just isn’t complete without real love. Never mind that Sophia’s tips are simply a little bit retrograde: Nonna gonna nonna.
As the cast of Joe Brancato’s Penguin Rep Theater manufacturing mostly does well by the https://mail-order-wives.org forced characters and situations — almost everything relating to the art globe is ludicrous — Rishe stands out together with his endearing portrayal of the nebbishy intimate.
It helps that Gitter is most comfortable writing that character, endowing Seth having a sweetness that falls simply in short supply of valuable, whether he’s teaching Angie the best way to consume a knish (“you place the mustard inside and close it up”) or taking a stand to their cousin as he questions their religion’s needs.
Rachel tells her bro which he has “adorably flustered charm” — which might be a pattern for Gitter heroes, given that male protagonist of their previous one-act “How My Grandparents Fell in Love” had been reported to be “admittedly charming, in a kind of bumbling way. ”
Lest we think Angie and Seth gallop too easily toward a predetermined joyfully ever after, the play offers them a formidable test that is final with a help from costume designer Gregory Gale: Seth arises in a screamingly ugly blazer and tie.
That Angie does recoil in horror n’t means Grandma Sophia can rest simple: This love is built to final.
The Sabbath GirlThrough March 8 at 59E59 Theaters, Manhattan; 646-892-7999, 59e59.org. Operating time: 60 minutes thirty minutes.
