The holiday season is drawing near, and for many of us, that’s cause for excitement. The lights! The parties! The food! And of course, the much-needed quality time spent with our loved ones. However, these wintery months can also bring a sense of seriousness and reflection, giving us the chance to think about ourselves, the year we’ve had, and the year ahead. These two conflicting states of celebration and contemplation are beautifully depicted in Delray Beach Playhouse’s production of The Last Night of Ballyhoo, directed by Keith Garsson.
The Tony-winning play, written by Alfred Uhry, is second in his “Atlanta Trilogy” (in between Driving Miss Daisy and Parade, both iconic productions in their own right, and, like this play, also focusing in large part on what it means to be Jewish in the South) and sends the audience about eighty-five years backward. It’s December 1939 in Atlanta, Georgia, Gone with the Wind is about to premiere, and, across the globe, Hitler has recently conquered Poland. But amidst the world’s chaos, all the Freitag-Levy family can think about, it seems, is Ballyhoo, a sumptuous ball hosted by their exclusive country club. An affluent family with a Christmas tree in their living room, the plight of Jews on the other side of the world surely can’t affect them…or can it? This year, the presence of Ballyhoo just might force the family to confront their Jewish identity—or the lack thereof—and the role it plays in their lives.
The Last Night of Ballyhoo’s cast is made up of seven characters, and the audience truly feels as if they’ve gotten to know each one by the end of the show. There’s the patriarch of the family, Adolph Freitag (Shane Tanner), his assistant Joe Farkas (Alex Bakalarz), who encourages the others to reexamine their notions of identity and family, and resident jokester Peachy Weil (Christian Cooper). While all three men do a fantastic job in their roles—Tanner as the thoughtful, kind father figure, Bakalarz as the intellectual who serves as the catalyst for change, and Cooper as the jester who makes everyone laugh both onstage and in the audience—the true standouts are, in my opinion, the women.
There’s Boo Levy (Betty Ann Hunt Strain), Adolph’s sister who is still grieving her husband’s death and battling her own internalized antisemitism, and who just wants her daughter to fit in. There’s her sister-in-law Reba (Liz DeBeer), who may be more clever than others give her credit for, but, like the rest of the family, is still largely oblivious to the weight of her Jewish identity. Both actors are brilliant at comedic timing and in the more sobering moments of the story, truly making audiences believe that these mothers just want the best for their children, even if they don’t always go about it in the perfect way.
However, the most compelling character dynamic may be found in their daughters, Lala Levy (Hannah Hayley) and Sunny Freitag (Rachel Whittington), who gave my personal favorite performances. The two cousins couldn’t appear more different—Lala is a college dropout and Gone with the Wind devotee, whose seemingly youthful, flighty demeanor often masks her insecurities of feeling inferior to Sunny, a Wellesley student who Lala feels is more intelligent, more successful, and, perhaps most importantly, more assimilated than she is. Both of them have lost their fathers; both of them have struggled with what it means to be Jewish in an environment where it would simply be easier if they were not. A core aspect of one of their arguments in their play revolves around Sunny being able to blend into society more readily due to her looks, which is somewhat ironic because of Hayley’s blond hair and blue eyes, and Worthington’s darker features.
Still, in spite of this sort of reversal, Hannah Hayley does a masterful job of making the audience feel Lala’s pain—how she feels “less than” her cousin in so many ways, how she feels like the loss of Sunny’s father, a popular man in the community, overshadowed the loss of her own, someone who was perhaps less well-known but no less special to the family. And on the other hand, Rachel Whittington is equally as adept in taking viewers on Sunny’s personal journey. After being singled out at a public pool with her friends when she was younger, and being dismissed purely because she was Jewish, Sunny has worked to hide her Jewishness. However, her perceptions of identity are turned upside down when she meets Joe, an Eastern European Jew hailing from New York. As they fall in love, Sunny must re-examine her prejudices against her own people, and investigate the beliefs with which she has been raised. Thanks to Hayley’s and Whittington’s performances, audience members will connect with these characters throughout, from their less sympathetic moments to the ones that will undoubtedly tug on your heartstrings.
While the cast is incredible, I’d also be remiss not to spotlight the impressive work by the show’s crew. We don’t spend time in too many locations—with the exception of a few scenes, most of the show takes place at the family home—but in the case of The Last Night of Ballyhoo, that is a real strength. Set Designer Claudia Smith fully draws the audience into the Freitag-Levy family’s world, making everyone feel as if they are truly at home for the holidays with the clan. Lighting design by Stevie Bleich and sound design by David Hart only add to this level of immersion.
With much of the production’s lighting coming from the fixture above the family’s dining room table, and the gleam of the shiny tinsel and twinkly lights on their Christmas tree (or, as Peachy aptly dubs it, a Chanukah bush), Bleich’s work adds to that cozy, festive ambiance. The snippets of music playing between scenes was a great touch in terms of sound, and really grounds the audience in that particular time period. Costume Designer Timothy Charles Bowman similarly cultivates that 1930s-40s feel with his costumes for the characters, and also provides further insight into what might be important to these figures. From the elaborate dress Lala wears to Ballyhoo to the sweater Reba knits for Sunny, clothes help expand on the story and the characters’ personalities even more deeply.
