On Stage

Part of Locally Grown: Community Supported Art Festival

April 3 – May 5

by Ari Roth
Directed by Daniella Topol

Featuring Alexander Strain, Jennifer Mendenhall, Colleen Delany, Veronica del Cerro, Kimberly Gilbert, Stephen Patrick Martin, Michael Claybourne and Davis Hasty

A comedy about family with Freudian hallucinations and pre-marital angst, from Theater J's Artistic Director and award winning playwright. Zipping from one rite-of-passage (and time period) to the next, Andy Glickstein is the filmmaking son of Holocaust refugees looking back at the wild weekend of his engagement to Sarah--as party plans fall apart; a famous film flop is hilariously re-made; duendé is discovered; and two vulnerable, differently indomitable parents and their pasts become more deeply understood.

The Glickstein siblings are each haunted by the triumphant tales of their parents’ escape from Nazi Germany. Desperate to make their lives as purposeful as their parents,' each child pursues a conscientious calling of his or her own. Oldest daughter Amy joins the Israeli Defense Forces.  Youngest daughter Tammy travels to refugee-ravaged Thailand.  Andy's search for a grand tragic calling leads him closer to home, burrowing through memories of growing up on the South Side of Chicago where neighborhood bullies test his mettle, while his mother regales him with heroic stories of fleeing the bombardment at Dunkirk, hiding in the Alps of Italy, and a convent in Rome.

Dwarfed by this history, Andy's search for his duendé—the Spanish expression of soulfulness made popular by Lorca and Ernest Hemingway--leads him to make a movie mythologizing his mother's triumphant legacy and, when that fails, his father's unsung Zionist heroism. Andy ultimately finds more meaning in a jar of jam and a hospital bed that sleeps two.
Winner of the Streisand Award for Playwriting, by the author of Born Guilty and Love and Yearning in the Not-for-Profits.

“Embraceable...Roth’s rhythms…combine the confessional tone of Arthur Miller’s After the Fall and the wry reflections of Woody Allen’s Annie Hall.”- The Washington Post

Running Time: 2 hours and 25 minutes, including a 15 minute intermission

Andy and the Shadows - A World Premiere from Theater J on Vimeo.