Review Roundup: BECOMING EVE Opens at NYTW

Screen and stage actress Tommy Dorfman stars as “Chava” in Becoming Eve at New York Theatre Workshop, the fourth production of its 2024/25 Season. Written by Emil Weinstein, based on the memoir by Abby Chava Stein, and directed by Tyne Rafaeli, it also stars Judy Kuhn, Tedra Millan, Rad Pereira, Justin Perkins, Richard Schiff, Brandon Uranowitz and Emma Wiseman.

A week before the High Holidays, three rabbis find themselves in a room fighting to save a family by building a bridge between orthodoxy and modernity. One of these rabbis is Chava, the child of a dynastic Hasidic rabbinical family and destined to become a leader of the next generation before the revelation of her trans identity clashed explosively with the strictly gendered world in which she was raised. As we jump through memory—and wrestle with theology—truths and secrets emerge that ensure no one will read the old stories the same way again. 

Let's see what the New York theatre critics are saying about the new play...

Robert Hofler, The Wrap: “Becoming Eve” happens to be a very funny play, some of the best moments coming in the cultural mashup between Schiff’s Hasidic rabbi and Uranowitz’s “transdenominational Renewal” rabbi, whom the father at one point calls Judas. The timing between these two great actors is vintage vaudeville.

Kyle Turner, New York Theatre Guide: Dorfman haunts these scenes while a puppet takes the place of a young, not-yet-self-actualized Abby. You can see Dorfman, often standing behind the puppet (operated by Justin Perkins and Emma Wiseman), take on the same anxiousness of the old Abby, whose soul is not yet matched with her body, fist clenched with a mix of anguish and determination. As the characters remind us, this bothness is intrinsic to the mysteries of life. If the show, at its best, is about someone in the present trying to make sense of their past to a parent, Dorfman seldom squanders her time.

Average Rating: 75.0%