The Chosen

Play (1999)
Adapted by Chaim Potok and Aaron Posner
From the novel by Chaim Potok

With Charles Linshaw (Reuven Malter and others), Zachary Eisenstadt (Young Reuven Malter), Joel Colodner (Reb Saunders), Will McGarrahan (David Malter), Luke Murtha (Danny Saunders)

Danny Saunders is the son of a Hasidic rebbe and Reuven Malter is the son of a Jewish scholar. Both are Orthodox teenagers, but Danny lives in a sequestered world, destined to inherit his father’s mantle. They meet as heated baseball rivals, then make up and become best friends. Reuven and his father, David, open Danny to a world beyond his Hasidic community. His intellectual thirst is aroused and he is thrown into the dilemma of choosing to pursue those interests, beyond the boundaries of his inscribed life, or, as is expected of him, to follow his destiny in the Hasidic world.

The Lyric Stage produced Chaim Potok’s adaptation of his novel of the same name,My Name is Asher Lev, two seasons ago. That adaptation had a natural theatrical pulse to it, in which a focal challenge, and a threat, provided dramatic shape.

Here, the narrative is true to the novel, but the play has a longer and more gradual arc. Though the story is rendered well, it is somewhat less dramatic than it might be. This nicely done production is directed and acted very well. But there is something in the rendering of the novel which, though faithful to it, and enjoyable to watch, does not, as a play, quite provide dramatic punch in the way that Ashev Lev did.

Luke Murtha, as Danny, is very good. I saw him recently in The Kite Runner at the New Repertory Theatre in which he did a great job as a vulnerable Afghani boy. Here, he also projects an intense vulnerability that is quite engaging.

Zachary Eisenstadt, as the young Reuven, is also very capable, delivering a sense of a less conflicted soul, but a dutiful and faithful friend.

Joel Colodner, who was also memorable in My Name Asher Lev, and who I have seen many times in Actors’ Shakespeare Project productions, plays a wonderful Hasidic rebbe. He broods and glares, but in a way that allows us to detect the caring and devoted heart within.

Will McGarrahan, as David Malter, brought this more deliberate and down to earth role to life in a satisfying way. I had seen him star last year in the Speakeasy Stage Company production of The Drowsy Chaperone and he was funny and engaging. But this more substantial part gave him an opportunity to convey a richer character, and he carried it off nicely.

The sound design by Dewey Dellay, who did the sound beautifully in My Name Is Asher Lev and who seems to be doing sound everywhere in the Boston theatre scene, was suggestive of Hebraic themes without indulging too literally in them, seeking rather to convey something more subtly dramatic, and that worked very well.

In the talk-back session after the show, the director and cast stressed the primary significance of the father-son theme in the play, noting religion as an important but not the central theme. That observation reinforced the play’s moving and emotionally charged trajectory.

Even so, the dramatic vehicle for conveying that issue, though housed in a perfectly capable production – certainly worth seeing – seemed less pointed than it might have been. In this case, as distinguished from My Name Is Asher Lev, the novel behind the play called out more forcefully, suggesting that the narrative material here might lend itself more naturally to prose than to drama.

– BADMan