“Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg!” ‘Ordinary Americans’ has a Deeply Affecting World Premiere

Palm Beach Dramaworks’ co-production with GableStage of Joseph McDonough’s Ordinary Americans recently made its triumphant World Premiere on the Dramaworks’ stage.  This stirring new play peels away to the truth of what it means to be human and to be vulnerable to political polarization, demagoguery and anti-Semitism.  The Dramaworks production and playwright Joseph McDonough’s insightful script touches us all, especially today.  The 1950s may have been “the placid decade,” but underneath all the apparent innocence of the times American politics and ethnic relations were as fractious as they are now.  

It is an ironic title as the characters in this play were anything but ordinary, especially our protagonist, Gertrude “Tillie” Berg who brilliantly and single handedly conceived, wrote, and starred in The Goldbergs, first on radio and then TV for more than two decades.  Her extraordinary accomplishments, as a woman, and a Jew, particularly in a man’s world echo throughout the play.  Yet she, her colleagues, especially Philip Loeb, fell victim to McCarthyism.  The play resonates with the feeling that the ghost of Roy Cohn still stalks the land.   

Ordinary Americans is performed on a nearly barren stage, serving a multiplicity of scenes in different places, the audience basically having to fill in for the presentational nature of Michael Amico’s scenic design.  It is the logical platform for those scene changes, fluidly balancing the play’s highly dramatic moments and humor to underscore its serious themes.

David Kwiat, Elizabeth Dimon, Rob Donohoe,

Photo by Samantha Mighdoll

It is a memory play, opening with a scene in a diner in Ohio (circa 1958), the I Love Lucy program on the diner’s TV, quickly transitioning to the NBC studios in NYC in 1950.  There stands the indefatigable Gertrude Berg, playing her spiritual doppelgänger, Molly Goldberg, surrounded by her TV cast in spotlighted tableau, her husband, “Jake Goldberg” (played by David Kwiat as Philip Loeb), and “Uncle David” (played by Rob Donohoe as Eli Mintz), as well as her lifetime assistant Fannie Merrill (played by Margery Lowe), and TV Production Manager for the show Walter Hart (played by Tom Wahl).  All are PBD veterans except David Kwiat who is making his PBD debut.  This dramatic “snapshot” of the major characters truly sets the stage for the story they will tell.

Elizabeth Dimon’s performance as Gertrude Berg is so graceful that we forget we are watching a consummate artist at work.  While radiating genuine warmth as The Goldbergs creator and star, Dimon’s “Tillie” does not suffer fools when crossed.  Yet, like her creation Molly, she too has a heart of gold.  Her TV family is her family.  In fact, at times she wonders “what would Molly do in this situation?”  Or “sometimes I think Molly is a better me than me.”  It is a difficult role to execute, a bifurcated person, yet Dimon believably conjures both Tillie and Molly’s kindness and humor.  If one wonders how Dimon can play this part with such heart and soul, it’s because the play was originally her idea as well as her dream role.  She’s been with the play since its inception and a couple of years of workshopping it at PBD.  A perfect fit for such a seasoned actor.

Dimon shows the other side of her character, an increasing frustration, especially in a maddening chaotic scene in her imagination of her being surrounded by potential advertisers or networks, screaming at her, multiple voices simultaneously.  Dimon slowly comes to the conclusion that her Tillie is at the end of her rope yelling “PLEASE LISTEN TO ME!” And then finally having to admit to herself that it’s “the first time in my life I feel helpless.”

David Kwiat, Elizabeth Dimon,

Photo by Alicia Donelan

While Tillie is the creative engine of the The Goldbergs program, and clearly the master of her fate, she is surrounded by people dependent on her for their employment.  At the top of the list is Philip Loeb, who David Kwiat deftly portrays as the perpetual optimist, an advocate for just causes, such as Actors Equity.  It is he who has to cope with the consequences of being on the infamous John Birch Society sponsored pamphlet of 151 artists and broadcasters entitled “Red Fascists and their Sympathizers,” otherwise known as “the Red Channels list.” (Tillie observes that the way they define “communist” is “anyone they don’t agree with, union organizers, activists, artists” and especially Jews.)

Kwiat is the ideal Philip, always hoping for the best, for himself, his colleagues and his son who needs institutional help.  He skillfully portrays Philip as a man suffering increasing desperation; his world falling apart under appalling injustice.  Kwiat’s final scene in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee is powerful as well as heartbreakingly pitiful, as he finally cries out, “Leave me alone…I’m a citizen and a human being.  You can’t take these away from me.”  It is a brave performance.  You will not forget his exit near the play’s end.

Tillie’s right hand gal, Fannie, is effectively played by the PBD veteran Margery Lowe, along with another minor role as “Mrs. Kramer” in The Goldbergs show itself.  Lowe, who is the accomplished professional having appeared in a number of PBD productions over the past, again comes through in these important supporting two roles, the efficient, buoyantly supporting Fannie, and her brief moments at a window as Mrs. Kramer, bellowing out “Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg!”

Elizabeth Dimon, Margery Lowe

Photo by Samantha Mighdoll

Another long-time PBD veteran, Rob Donohoe, plays a number of roles, showcasing his versatility.  As Eli Mintz he is “Uncle David” in the show, adding humor and Greek chorus support in the background, Yiddish accent and all.  Eli Mintz is the play’s Cassandra; always thinking the “Red List” will metastasize into something serious for the show (he was right of course).  His interaction with Philip in particular is filled with much needed humor and affection for his colleague. 

Elizabeth Dimon, Rob Donohoe,

Photo by Alicia Donelan

His portrayal of Cardinal Spellman is purposely pedantic, which speaks to Tillie’s private admonishment of the man, “All politician, no clergy.”  He’s also the voice of the grand inquisitor, a Senator from the House Un-American Activities Committee bellowing out at Philip with eerie “witch hunt” hysteria assisted by David Thomas’ sound design (more on that later).

He has a brief hilarious role as the diner owner in Dayton Ohio, fumbling his words, touting chicken salad as his special, and pretending to know the play, The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder, which Tillie has come to Dayton late in her career to play, her television show now an apparition of the past.

PBD veteran Tom Wahl is a jack of all trades in this show, playing a number of roles, not an easy task to differentiate them all, but succeeds amazingly.  First and foremost, he is Walter Hart, The Goldbergs Production Manager on the set, played with exasperation on making deadlines, clipboard in hand.  He also plays other key roles: as Roger Addington, the General Foods executive who first brings the “Red Channels List” to Tillie’s attention, requesting that Philip Loeb, whose name is on the list, be removed from the show, but backing down as Tillie responds: “no one tells Gertrude Berg to fire anyone.”  While Addington takes her no as a temporary answer, he warns Tillie worse is to come. 

As Frank Stanton, the President of CBS, Wahl expresses empathy yet the firmness which earned Stanton’s reputation at CBS as being a “son of a bitch.”  It is an affecting scene, Stanton and Tillie, Stanton demanding that Tillie fire Philip Loeb, and Tillie refusing, yet again.  Wahl walks that fine line evoking some audience sympathy for the character trying to cajole Tillie (“We’re survivors in this business.”).  The stalemate ends in the cancellation of the show. 

Wahl plays still another “one of those men in suits”.­­ a young ad executive, who Molly hopes will help find a sponsor for her reconstituted show which has been off the air for a year (now without Philip as her husband and set in the suburbs of all places).  Wahl’s ad man recounts the facts:  “It’s 1955. Nobody has ethnicity anymore…Celebrate the Unity….People want to see ordinary Americans…Molly Goldberg had a good run. Let her rest in peace.”  And while sensitively delivered by Wahl, Tillie now stands alone finally mouthing the plaintive line, so achingly delivered by Dimon, “Molly, Goodbye Molly.”

There are many seamless scene transitions in this memory play and this is where the excellence of Director Bill Hayes and his technical crew shine.  Where actors need to be with split second timing is a key to the play’s success and this work is generally invisible to the audience, without curtains being drawn.  It leads to lively pacing, and Hayes knows when actors should slow their pace, or even pause, to let the play’s funny moments land securely.

Lighting is critical in this play, such as, the subtle flickering of lights when a TV showing The Milton Berle or I Love Lucy shows is on the restaurant or bar, or the sudden burst of full lighting when cutting to the studio scenes.  Or most effectively (and affecting) the lighting during the Hearings, Philip Loeb in a solitary spot, alone on stage except for Tillie watching from her memory in the shadows, and then during the news report of Philip Loeb’s suicide, the lights slowing coming up in muted yellow bathing the audience itself, as if we’re part of the same story today.  PBD newcomer Christina Watanabe’s lighting design is remarkable.

Sound design is usually important for mood and background, but takes on another level of importance in this show.  It of course has the requisite musical interludes, especially different takes on the music that was associated with The Goldbergs, Toselli’s gentle waltz, “Italian Serenade.”  Sound designer David Thomas also had the challenge of delivering lines from the play, electronically enhanced echoed questions being thrown to Philip Loeb during the Hearings, and the cacophony of news headlines crying out about McCarthy’s accusations, teletype clacking in the background, and haunting sounds in Tillie’s mind.

PBD resident costume designer, Brian O’Keefe, cleverly decided to go with red, white and blue palettes against the barren stage, in particular Tillie’s red dress with a wide satin collar and pearls, a jacket to delineate important meetings.  Of course, TV Molly became easily identifiable with her added white apron as a “typical” housewife of her time.  Fannie was normally dressed in dark blue while the men wore subdued grays, all outfits mid fifties perfect. 

This is an important play, constantly underscoring themes that are so significant and germane to our current, often stressful, times.  Joseph McDonough’s Ordinary Americans joins the canon of classic plays honorably based on aspects of our own dark American history, ones that remind us to heed our past.

‘Quichotte’ by Salman Rushdie - Making sense of Y2K’s Second Decade

While we were at the Malaprop's Bookstore/Café in Asheville I spied a signed edition of Salman Rushdie’s recently published novel, Quichotte (pronounced “key-shot”).  I vaguely remembered reviews that recommended the work.  I looked it over and the jacket copy hooked me:  “Just as Cervantes wrote Don Quixote to satirize the culture of his time, Rushdie takes the reader on a wild ride through a country on the verge of moral and spiritual collapse.”  Having never read Rushdie, I snapped up that next to last copy, although reading a signed edition has its downsides:  no marginal note taking allowed, no turned down corners of pages to mark important passages.  Plus, I knew I wouldn’t get to it for a while.

“A while” stretched well into the fall and, finally, I began it, clearly a modern day take off on Don Quixote (from which our main character derives his name), but the character Quichotte is a creation of another character, a crime fiction writer, “Brother” with a pen name of Sam Duchamp.  If you are looking for a logically organized, cohesive novel, this is not the one, but if you value a writer’s ability to capture the soul of society in a “moment” in time, then you simply must admire Rushdie’s work.

There are so many characters contributing to the overall sense of a world gone terrifyingly out of control, a sprawling novel in its allusions and conceits, a brilliant work of postmodern fiction, with metafictitious elements so you are constantly caught off guard.  There are stories within stories oftentimes with the identity of the author unclear.  There are pastiches of popular culture the sum of which point the way to the vapid disintegration of values and truth, making it a hallmark work of dystopian literature.

Perhaps it is Rushdie’s age.  He, as with Quichotte (and Brother), as well as myself, are only too aware that time is running out.  Is there enough left to put our personal lives in “order” while the societies we inhabit (in this novel, America, England, and India) are teetering on the precipice of chaos?  There are constant veiled allusions to absurdists such as Ionesco and Beckett.  The elderly Quichotte has by pure will conjured up a son, “Sancho” to accompany him on his “quest” to find his true love, Salma R., a reality TV star (magical realism and phantasmagoria abound throughout the entire novel).  “Father and son” had been sleeping under the stars but they’ve had a quarrel.  Quichotte has gone back to sleep, but Sancho, half ghost at this point, half real person, has climbed to the roof of their Chevy, listening to the crickets and looking up at the humbling wheel of the galaxy.  There was a sign if you wanted one, he thought, a gigantic starlight finger flipping the bird at the Earth, pointing out that all human aspiration was meaningless and all human achievement absurd when measured against the everything of everything.  Up there was the immensity of the immensity, the endless distance of the distance, the impossible scale, the thunderous silence of all that light, the million million million blazing suns out there where nobody could hear you scream.  And down here the human race, dirty ants crawling across a small rock circling a minor star in the outlying provinces of a lesser galaxy in the inconsequential boondocks of the universe, narcissistic ants mad with egotism, insisting in the fact of the fiery night-sky evidence to the contrary that their puny anthills stood at the heart of it all.  (Do I hear the echo of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days? )

As a picaresque novel it savagely satires the entire America of now, a society gone wild with the self indulgent consumption of popular culture, conspiracy theories, xenophobia, opioid addition, and political polarization.  Rushdie skillfully moves his characters from one story to another, sometimes intersecting, part of his metafictional technique, with such alacrity that the novel is best read not in little sips before bedtime as I did, but in a few large gulps.  Still, you’ll wonder about it all.  It is not easy to follow, but it is compelling to follow.  I found that I had to read the prior few pages before I picked it up again.

In addition to Quichotte, who used to be a pharmaceutical salesman for his relative, “Dr. Smile,” there is the good doctor’s wife, “Happy” who pushes her husband to become successful which leads to Smile’s highly addictive sub-lingual Fentanyl spray called “InSmile.”  This ultimately connects Quichotte to Salma R., the reality TV star (and InSmile addict) whose mother and grandmother were also TV stars in her place of birth, India, which not coincidently is where Quichotte was born (and, of course, Rushdie as well).

Quichotte has problems with his sister, as does “Brother” in a parallel story and as the novel progresses; these tend to run less side by side but converge.  As I said, it’s an unreal novel, hard to follow, but necessary to read.  Why necessary?

Well, for me, it so eloquently suggests answers to some questions I raised in Waiting for Someone to Explain It; The Rise of Contempt and Decline of Sense. 

When I complied that book from my political musings in this blog, its tongue in cheek title expressed the increasing questions that seem to rise as I age and with these times seemingly spinning apart.  I think Rushdie is similarly expressing a feeling of hopelessness for the human race, and in particular, our nation. I realize that this belief is nihilistic and cynical, but in fiction he presents abounding evidence. 

Dues ex machina!  In the end Quichotte and Salma R. take an “impossible journey” across an America that has devolved into a dystopian landscape to get to California to find one of Salma R’s TV guests, the Elon Muskian (mad? evil?) scientist “Evel Sent”, who claims he has invented a portal to an alternative Earth.  Seriously, he’s sent a dog though there and brought him back, although, as the dog can’t speak, we really can’t quite be sure (yes, the novel is also very funny at times).  If only Quichotte and Salma R can get to the portal, and they do!  But what happens then?  Not wanting to float a spoiler, I’ll end this paragraph here.

This will probably be my last novel for this year, this decade, but it was such an appropriate one as it will be the last entry as well in a chapter in the book I am now slowly compiling which is the antipole of Waiting for Someone to Explain It.  Our writers and playwrights, although their works are considered “fiction” now tilt the fiction / non-fiction scale the other way.  In this era of “fake” news, what is really fake?  Nowadays, I rely on real news from some of our airway’s best comics, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher, and John Oliver in particular.  Interviews with elected officials can’t seem to measure up to the bar of truth that our comics transcend.

Quichotte in answering a question posed by his “son” Sancho, sums up the importance of what our novelists contribute to the enigma of our times: “I think it’s legitimate for a work of art made in the present time to say, we are being crippled by the culture we have made, by its most popular elements above all…and by stupidity and ignorance and bigotry.”

And then there is the ultimate absurdist question, does it matter at all?  This is where the process of aging and the very nature of existence converge: What vanishes when everything vanishes: not only everything, but the memory of everything. Not only can everything no longer remember itself, no longer remember how it was when it still was everything, before it became nothing, but there is nobody else to remember either, and so everything not only ceases to exist but becomes a thing that never was; it is as if everything that was, was not, and moreover there is nobody left to tell the story, not the whole grand story of everything, not even the last sad story of how everything became nothing, because there is no storyteller, no hand to write or eye to read, so that the book of how everything became nothing cannot be written, just as we cannot write the stories of our own deaths, which is our tragedy, to be stories whose endings can never be known, not even to ourselves, because we are no longer there to know them.

And, so, the second decade of the 21^st century draws to its end.

Highly Anticipated ‘Ordinary Americans’ Opens this Week at Palm Beach Dramaworks

It is rare for a World Premiere play to be extended before it even opens, but the pre-opening demand for Palm Beach Dramaworks’ Ordinary Americans by Joseph McDonough has been so enthusiastic, that it has now been extended to January 5, opening on December 6.  Is it no wonder?  This new play dramatizes a time not unlike our own, written by a proven playwright, and staring one of South Florida’s most accomplished actors, Elizabeth Dimon as the indefatigable Gertrude “Tillie” Berg (AKA Molly Goldberg).

Elizabeth Dimon as Gertrude Berg

Photo by Samantha Mighdoll

Ordinary Americans has all the right stuff to make it a hit.

When television was in its infancy, few actors were as beloved as Gertrude Berg and the gentle comedy that she created, wrote, produced, and starred in, The Goldbergs.  The program began on radio in 1929, and 20 years later became one of TV’s earliest sitcoms.  For her portrayal of Molly Goldberg, the matriarch of a Jewish family living in the Bronx, Berg was the first recipient of an Emmy Award for Best Actress. 

The Goldbergs was a huge moneymaker for CBS.  And then, in June, 1950, a pamphlet, “Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television,” was published by a right-wing newsletter. It listed 151 artists and broadcasters as “Red Fascists and their sympathizers.”  Proponents of civil rights and academic freedom were among the favorite targets.  Many of them, not coincidentally, were Jewish.  Among those ensnared by this very real witch hunt was Philip Loeb, who played Jake Goldberg, Molly’s TV husband.  When CBS demanded that Berg fire Loeb, she refused.  The show was taken off the air.

The aftermath of that decision, and the consequences of McCarthyism and anti-Semitism on Berg, Loeb, and the Goldberg “family,” is at the center of Joseph McDonough’s Ordinary Americans, a co-production with GableStage that was commissioned by Palm Beach Dramaworks.

There is an unusual back story about the play’s beginnings: it was suggested by Elizabeth Dimon who plays the lead.  “I came to the idea of a possible play about Gertrude Berg after reading about the ‘blacklisting’ of actors during the 1950’s ‘red scare’.  This remarkable woman not only starred in her own show, but had authored more than 12,000 radio and TV scripts during her lifetime.  She was in sharp contrast to most in the TV business, a strong, independent figure, and a woman as well. I thought to myself, I would love to play Berg and brought the idea about a play to Bill.” 

Bill Hayes, PBD Producing Artistic Director was intrigued and immediately thought of Joe McDonough as the ideal playwright.  “In addition to PBD being instrumental in developing this play, it is the timeliest play we’ve ever done.  What was going on then was so subversive; everyone just thought that justice would prevail.  Although our present times are not exactly the same, it was a similar world, just seen through a different prism. I felt a co production with GableStage was important to spread the message this play has to say.  I also think it’s important for the arts of collaborate – there is strength in numbers – so this play will open in Miami soon after it closes here.  It is our hope that it will eventually be picked up by other theatres as well.”

Joseph McDonough

The playwright, Joe McDonough said “I enjoyed writing almost an historical piece, infusing it with the natural drama of the story, and felt a tremendous obligation towards fidelity. In fact I researched the papers of Philip Loeb at the New York Public Library, which had his notes before he testified before the House on Un-American Activities. Among his notes was this plaintive statement: ‘here I am having tried to do justice in my life and now I am being made a victim of injustice.’  I’m telling a tragedy here and want to be faithful to the real people in the drama. It’s a powerful story that excites and the universality of the issues are such they almost write themselves.”

David Kwait in his PBD debut plays Philip Loeb.  “Ordinary Americans is a revelation to me as The Goldbergs was before my time.  I admire my character’s sense of justice always being on the side of advocacy for actors and their working conditions.  In the play Angels in America I ironically acted the part of Roy Cohn, the polar opposite of Philip Loeb, and from the same era, but my training is to be an advocate for the character and let the audience decide.”

Tillie’s right hand gal, Fannie, is played by Margery Lowe.  “Fannie’s outright dedication to Tillie, and her ability to keep her boss under control was remarkable.  They were like sisters.  And I love playing with Beth as we’ve acted together more than a dozen times and we can communicate with just a look. And I like my secondary role as Mrs. Kramer being able to shout out “Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg!  The play seems eerily current as I drove down I95 today listening to the Congressional Hearings.”

Rob Donohoe and Tom Wahl play a number of roles, a testament to how PBD is able to stage the play along with Donohoe and Wahl’s versatility. 

Donohoe said “although a World Premiere, this experience was very different that the last one I played in at PBD, House on Fire, which came to us pretty much a finished piece.  Ordinary Americans was commissioned by PBD and underwent enormous changes in its development.  I play a number of characters but mainly Eli Mintz who is ‘Uncle David’ on the TV show.  He was an immigrant from Poland and his pessimism is like a Greek Chorus in the play.  I also play Cardinal Spellman who wheeled tremendous influence in the 1950s. Although he was a man of strong convictions about himself, I hope to show his humanity, his belief that he was saving souls even though he played a part in ‘the Red Scare.”  Donohoe summed it all up saying “it is frightening how similar that period of distrust and fear resembles those of today, and this new play captures that very feeling.”

Following its run at PBD, Ordinary Americans moves south to GableStage, where it can be seen from January 18 – February 16, 2020. PBD Producing Artistic Director William Hayes directs the play. Ilana Becker is the associate director (PBD debut). Set design is by Michael Amico, costume design is by Brian O’Keefe, lighting design is by Christina Watanabe (PBD debut), and sound design is by David Thomas.