TWO JEWS TALKING
by Ed. Weinberger
Directed by Dan Wackerman
Starring Hal Linden, Bernie Kopell and Tim Jerome
Theatre at St. Clement’s
Official Website
Reviewed by David Spencer
I am, at this point, perhaps not an old Jew, but a senior citizen Jew by a few years, and old enough to remember the kinds of Jewish comedians Billy Crystal personified in Mr. Saturday Night. And the sensibility of contemporary humor written by Jews whether they were exploring Jewish themes or not: Herb Gardner, Neil Simon, Buck Henry, Mel Brooks, Linda Stewart, Danny Arnold…and, you know when Ed. Weinberger—who even wrote for comedians who weren’t Jewish, as well as for The Mary Tyler Moore show and created or co-created TV series such as Taxi—writes a new play, I’m like: attention must be paid. I’d also very much liked his autobiographical one man play A Man and His Prostate, which Ed Asner toured in for several years.
But I am something else too, I find. As a musical dramatist and book author, I am aware of how aspects of a changing world must also be paid homage. I don’t mean woke and diversity and representation in the buzzword sense as ends-in-themselves, but I do mean acknowledging those factors as barometers of what the world has moved on from and what the world is moving toward. And while I love-love-love my memories of classic, Jewish inflected comedy, and still of course prize a certain Yiddishkeit, it should live and be well in the worlds of art and entertainment, ohmein…I think Yiddishkeit has to move on too.
Not that I have anything against Two Jews Talking, which is basically what the title says, but implicit is also old. In the Biblical first of its two short one acts (performed sans intermission), they are Bud and Lou, old friends who have been following Moses in the desert for 20 years, taking a break to sit on a couple of rocks and discuss their situations. In the second act, they are Phil and Marty, meeting for the first time on a bench at the cemetery, Phil to visit his son, Marty to visit his wife, where they get acquainted and…discuss their situations.
The biggest difference is that in the first playlet, the men know each other and in the second they don’t. The thing that connects the plays is that it doesn’t matter: two old Jews will find a rhythm.
There are no stories per se. It’s Shavian dialectic by way of the Catskills.
Does it play? If you have two great old tummlers, it must, and Two Jews Talking has three: Hal Linden and Bernie Kopell, who are the topline stars, and Tim Jerome, the standby, who has just as long and lauded an old-pro career, goes on quite a bit and is in no way a step down.
Is it comfort food for folks who have the memory, or the cultural ear that hears the reverberation? Absolutely.
What it’s not, though…is where we are. It’s two old Jews trying to make sense of the world, all right, but it’s not this world. Sensibility-wise, it’s the world thirty, forty years ago. Nor is it truly dealing with the phenomenon of people trying to parse what’s going on now through the filters of thirty, forty years ago, when they understood things. If it had been produced thirty, forty years ago, the script differences would have been minimal. And Dan Wackerman’s direction would have been identical; because really all he’d be doing is pacing it, bolt-tightening here and there and otherwise staying out of the way (which is exactly what the gig here should be). What the hell is he going to tell Linden, Kopell and Jerome about playing this stuff that they don’t already know?
Okay, tell me that means it’s timeless. I won’t argue. I’m a senior citizen and it would make me tired.
All I’m saying, and it’s all I’m saying, is that there’s an entire literature of plays, movies, TV shows, recordings, that will never go away and that remain cherished testament to this kind of humor…and that I wish, somehow, that Mr. Weinberger had taken on the harder challenge of putting that sensibility, somehow, into the context of now. And I know, I know, he’s an old Jew too and Two Jews Talking (by his own admission) explores the things he thinks about, and he’s under no obligation to alter that when calling up the tools of his long and lauded career for a light entertainment. I sure get that.
But I think the effort may have made the difference between a perfectly nice vehicle and another classic to add to the catalog.