Humor Is Celebrated at Ballyhoo But Missing A Lot Of Heart

Reba (Liz DeBeer), left, watches while Lala (Hannah Hayley) receives a scolding from her mother, Boo, (Betty Ann Hunt Strain) for topping the family Christmas with a star.  // Photos by Amy Pasquantonio.

By Jan Sjostrom

The Christmas tree in the Freitag family’s living room in Alfred Uhry’s play The Last Night of Ballyhoo says it all.

It signals how far this upper-class Atlanta family has strayed from its Jewish roots. The only thing Jewish about them is their awareness of how they’ve been discriminated against by people who aren’t Jewish. It never occurs to them that they’re doing the same thing to other Jews.

Boca Stage exposes these blind spots in a production at the Delray Beach Playhouse that’s long on energy and humor but short on depth. Under the guidance of director Keith Garsson, the punch lines strike home. Most characters are boldly drawn. But there’s not a lot of heart.

The 1997 Tony Award winner is part of Uhry’s trilogy inspired by his recollections of growing up Jewish in the 1940s and 1950s in Atlanta. The other shows are the Tony and Pulitzer Prize winner Driving Miss Daisy and the Tony Award crowned musical Parade.

The Last Night of Ballyhoo is set in December 1939, shortly after Hitler invaded Poland and concurrent with Gone with the Wind’s movie debut in Atlanta.

Adolph Freitag, a longtime bachelor, stoically maintains a household of female relatives and runs the family bedding company. His sister Boo is obsessed with maintaining the family’s social standing and marrying off her daughter Lala, who’s as witless as her name implies. His sister-in-law Reba is the mother of Adolph’s favorite niece, Sunny. Played by Liz DeBeer, she’s a peaceable soul who’s slow on the uptake.

As the show opens, Sunny returns home for a holiday break from her studies at Wellesley College. She finds Boo in a tizzy about Ballyhoo, a festival patronized by Atlanta’s wealthy Jews that mimics Southern whites’ high society events. Boo will do whatever it takes to ensure that Lala, who spends her days fantasizing about Gone with the Wind and unattainable career paths, lands a date for the Ballyhoo dance with the socially prominent Peachy Weil.

Sunny is more interested in her studies than Ballyhoo. That is until Joe, a New Yorker who recently joined the family company, takes a shine to her and asks her to the dance.

He encounters an instant enemy in Boo. She spots him as an interloper, a Jew of East European and Russian descent far beneath the notice of superior German Jews like the Freitags.

The show revolves around how Joe challenges Sunny’s complacent acceptance of the family’s ultra-assimilated lifestyle and forces her to see their prejudice against their own kind.

Adolph (Shane Tanner) uses his dry wit to endure living in a household dominated by women.

Shane Tanner’s portrayal of Adolph is the show’s best. He’s a multidimensional character who responds with wry humor to the women’s brouhaha over Ballyhoo, warmth to Sunny, and steely anger to Boo’s attempt to smear him with old resentments.

As Boo, Betty Ann Hunt Strain mixes Southern wit and manners with the determination of an oncoming tank.

Hannah Hayley’s blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty undercuts Lala’s lament that she looks too Jewish to ever be accepted by the in crowd. But she’s perfect in moments such as Lala’s pugnacious flirtation with Peachy and her grand entrance wearing her Ballyhoo finery – a hideous hooped dress worthy of a frumpy Scarlett O’Hara. (Or, as Adolph puts it, Scarlett O’Goldberg.) She’s less amusing during Lala’s frequent lapses into shrillness.

Rachel Whittington’s self-possessed Sunny is a likable character. Unfortunately, there’s little chemistry between Sunny and Alex Bakalarz’s monochromatic Joe, which weakens the story’s romantic impetus.

Bakalarz’s one-dimensional portrayal also fails to foreshadow Joe’s outburst in a pivotal scene at the dance, when Peachy, played as a braying buffoon by Christian Cooper, casually labels him as “not one of us.”

The Last Night of Ballyhoo isn’t particularly memorable. It is an often entertaining and gentle reminder of humans’ lamentable tendency to punish others when they have been mistreated.

Boca Stage’s production of The Last Night of Ballyhoo runs through Nov. 3 in the Cabaret Theatre at the Delray Beach Playhouse, 950 NW 9^th St., Delray Beach. Running time two hours with a 15-minute intermission.  Performances are held on Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday at 1 p.m. Tickets cost $59 to $69 and are available at delraybeachplayhouse.com or by calling 561-272-1281.