Nancy Craig
Esther's children have to contend with her violent legacy -- and her ghost.
In the opening scene of Esther’s Descendants, the new play written and directed by Jan Levine Thal, we meet Esther (Pamela Adams), a sharp-tongued, vodka-swilling senior citizen who has hijacked a Hebrew school class. As her “students,” we learn all about her namesake, the biblical Esther and the story of Purim, where for the first time, Jews rose up to settle the score against their oppressors.
The scene introduces the themes of the play: overbearing mothers and whether lying and manipulation is acceptable — even if it hurts the ones you love, but saves you from disaster.
The play, which runs at Broom Street Theater through Oct. 1, also addresses important questions: What is owed in a family? When are violence and bloodshed acceptable? Like Haman before us, we learn another crucial lesson: Don’t cross Esther — or there’ll be hell to pay.
We also meet Esther’s adopted, black daughter Mimi (Martha E. White) and her gay, “oops” baby Daniel (T.J. Spires). Esther and her traumatized, henpecked children represent classic archetypes used in plays and movies by Jewish writers (See Woody Allen, Albert Brooks, Mel Brooks, etc., etc.).
But Esther’s Descendants loses its way by bringing in a whole other genre, the gangster film. Esther, it turns out, is not only an ungrateful noodge, she’s also a Mafia kingpin, running a local gang that buys off many of the cops in town, including the seductive Josh (Bryan Royston).
After the opening scene, which did pique my interest, the play experiences pacing problems, compounded by several nearly motionless scenes. By the end, I missed the early wisecracking Esther, the one who sneered at us and waved her martini glass in our faces, demanding that we listen to her version of history. I felt I could learn something from that Esther about the mysteries of life and death. Sure, she was hard-nosed and problematic, but she had something to say.
After that initial scene, all we see of Esther is her ghost, and it’s a shrieking, ineffectual specter. Her children are left to muddle their way through the rest of the plot. Guns blazing, they attempt to figure out who gets to inherit Esther’s money and crumbling kingdom. Those initial, important questions about cruelty and family are all but lost. To quote Esther herself, “Oy f’ing vey!”
