BWW Reviews: Jobsite Theater's THE LAST NIGHT OF BALLYHOO at the Shimberg

As soon I got home from seeing Jobsite's LAST NIGHT OF BALLYHOO on Saturday night, I turned on the TV and in a perfect moment of synchronicity, an ad for the Gone with the Wind 75th anniversary DVD appeared. After watching a show set in Atlanta at the time of the GWTW premiere, I thought it was quite a wonderful coincidence. My mother's side of the family came from that area (she, my grandmother and my aunts all lived just south of there at the time), and I know that the three-day Gone with the Wind Atlanta premiere in December of 1939 was the biggest thing to hit the Empire State of the South since Sherman's March.

But Gone with the Wind is just a mere drop in what Alfred Uhry's Tony Award winning play is about. It's mainly about the most literally unorthodox Jewish family you ever met. (Uhry obviously writes what he knows; he also scribed Driving Miss Daisy about an elderly Southern Jewish woman and her black driver.) THE LAST NIGHT OF BALLYHOO has a situation comedy feel to it--it's like an Atlanta-based Neil Simon memoir, only quirkier. But it rang true to me. Even though I am not Jewish, I saw some of my Georgia relatives on that stage.

The Jobsite cast of seven are all strong to varying degrees. Ned Averill-Snell as the owner of the Dixie Bedding Company, Adolph Freitag, is an incredible presence, commanding the stage even when he doesn't speak. Just as strong is Ami Sallee as Boo Levy, Adolph's sister; Sallee is always in the moment, always reactive and over-reactive (she reminded me most of some of my more high-strung dearly departed relatives). She looks like a cross between Margaret Dumont and Maria Dressler as a harried Southern/Jewish housewife.

There was one unscripted moment Sallee had in the show that is the reason why I love live theater. The actress actually turned a technical glitch into a great audience moment. In Act 1, the phone rang and she answered it. However, once she picked up the old-style receiver, the phone accidentally rang one more time. But Sallee saved the scene with a mere confused glance at the phone, as any of us would do if we answered a phone that kept mysteriously ringing. It was a moment so human, so real, that we forgave the glitch and loved the actress even more.

Suzy Devore is quite funny as Reba Freitag, and Katie Castonguay is lively as the off-the-wall Lala Levy, Boo's hyper-emotional, feisty daughter who has a Scarlett fixation and who may or may not get asked to the annual Ballyhoo (the German-Jewish country club's big cotillion). We get the feeling of the life Lala will live if she doesn't change soon....a Tennessee Williams stock character, part Blanche craziness, part Laura reclusiveness. Will she become an old maid and make the name of the street where she lives--Havisham--quite ironic? But she, like Laura in The Glass Menagerie, gets a gentlemen caller in Act 2, so perhaps anything is possible. As the puckish, red-headed gentleman caller, Peachy Weil, Jordan Foote is an absolute hoot. He's a goofball prankster, and not having an ounce of self-consciousness, he doesn't care how obnoxious he appears. Anyone who had the pleasure of seeing Foote as the intense Van Gogh in Jobsite's Inventing Van Gogh this past summer will be delighted at his 180-degree turn here. You would never know it was the same actor.

Reba has a daughter, Sunny Freitag, and as played by the wonderfully natural Emily Belvo, she is easily one of my favorites in the show. Matching up with her is the gregarious outsider, Joe Farkas, played by the super-talented Nathan Jokela. Belvo's scenes with Jokela are the highlights of the show--a respite from the wackiness surrounding them. We fall for them as they fall for each other. These are two young actors in top form, and they are the heart and soul of THE LAST NIGHT OF BALLYHOO.

The cozy set exudes warmth and nostalgia, with framed old photos on the wall and a Christmas tree in a Jewish home that represents a family's total immersion in the modern world (as well as a cluelessness about their own religion). Three scenes do not take place in this home--two in a train station and one at a dance--and I still wonder if it's handled in the best way possible with mere lighting changes and the actors doing the scenes on the same set. Yes, we get by with suspension of disbelief at this point--we know they're not actually in the home; but it is a slight distraction, mainly with the Ballyhoo scene. Kaylin Gess' lighting is fine, and Beth Tepe-Robertson's costumes capture the time period perfectly, especially Lala's zany Scarlett O'Hara gown.

Music selections between scenes, mostly jazz versions of Christmas standards, work well for the most part, and the use of "Moonlight Serenade" at the dance fits just perfectly (the song came out earlier in 1939). However, there was one anachronistic song that should not have been included amongst the between-scenes music: a jazz version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." Although the poem of "Rudolph" was part of a Montgomery Ward booklet in 1939, the famous Johnny Marks music was not written until ten years later. I know this is a trivial issue, but any time we are made aware of a mistake, even a minor one like this, it takes us out of the play.

Some of the accents were inconsistent, and there were occasional diction issues where someone was screeching the lines so much that not a word could be deciphered. Act 1's pacing was hit or miss, but Act 2 was stellar. Gavin Hawk's direction was quite good overall, with the exception of one moment where the actors cross downstage for no apparent reason, with no apparent motivation; it made no sense in the context of what was going on (other than perhaps to keep the actors moving). Otherwise, staging and acting were of the highest quality.

Jobsite's first play of the season is a winner; if this is any indication of the shows to come, it's going to be quite an exciting year of theater.

THE LAST NIGHT OF BALLYHOO runs until September 28th (Thursdays thru Saturdays at 8:00 pm and Sundays at 4:00 pm) at the Shimberg Playhouse in the Straz Center for the Performing Arts. For tickets, call (813) 229-7827.