Bad Jews

[jbm2]

Opens tomorrow night, anyone going? Would love to hear thoughts....

[jbm2]

anyone see this tonight?

[aaronb]

Bump.

[stevenycguy]

I'm surprised Roundabout still lists the running time as "TBA" on their web site. Does anyone know the running time ?

[jbm2]

has anyone seen this end? How is it? Run time?

[RippedMan]

Is this part of the underground?

[wexy]

^ Yes it is.

[jbm2]

Bump

[After Eight]

Agony. Anguish. Dentist's drill pain. Take your choice. That's what it is to sit through this.

A motor-mouth shrew harangues her lump-of-clay cousin, his grad-school pill of a brother, and the latter's vapid girlfriend, for what seemed an eternity.

The "highlight" of the show was when the shrew and the grad student argue (all they ever do is argue) while stuffing their faces with pound cake. The shrew's cheeks bulge like a squirrel's filled with acorns, while she still talks up a storm.

Previously, we were delighted with the spectacle of her talking with corn muffin in her mouth, again bulging in her cheek. Swallow your food, lady, before you recommence your harangues. Better yet, shut up altogether!

And to any directors who might be reading this: Don't have your actors speak with their mouths full of food. It's gross.

[aaronb]

Guess I'm glad I waited on this one.

[WhizzerMarvin TrinaJasonMendel]

It's funny what "nasty" characters we're able to enjoy for a couple of hours and which characters are instantly insufferable. George and Martha, Ivanov and company- these neurotic, damaged and sometimes pathetic characters are a delight to spend an evening with. Then you have such hateful characters, as the ones presented in Bad Jews, and you don't even care enough to want to kill them. You simply want to walk out.

The lead character is SO hateful she makes Barkin look sympathetic on The New Normal. Another character describes her as a "fvcking cvnt and a fvcking bitch," and she herself has the line, "She'll (Molly Ranson) will put Poppy's necklace around her Christian cvnt throat over my dead Jew body." Any intended humor is completely suffocated by the nastiness of the characters.

The characters also spoke and reacted to insults in completely unrealistic ways.

It doesn't matter what these actors would try to do. The dialogue makes them too unlikable for any actor to infuse any humanity into the proceedings. (The exception would be Molly Ranson's character who plays a somewhat stupidly optimistic character to balance out the others, but even her character got on my nerves.)