Review: With PRAYER FOR THE FRENCH REPUBLIC Boston Has its First Must-See New Play of The Fall Season

The Joshua Harmon play “Prayer for the French Republic” – now being given a superbly rendered production by the Huntington – raises questions that have faced the Jewish people for generations, chief among them, “where are Jews safe?” and “why do they hate us?”

The story opens in Paris in 2016, with Marcelle Salomon Benhamou and her husband Simon Benhamou alarmed when their adult son, Daniel, arrives home beaten and bruised because he was wearing a yarmulke. The couple will come to question their safety and consider whether their sense of belonging in France – their beloved homeland since their family first settled there in the 1870s – is being compromised by a rise in antisemitism.

Soon, they consider leaving Paris for a new life in Israel – a difficult question which Harmon fleshes out by moving the action back and forth between 2016 and the 1940s, through the lives and charged relations among five generations of their family.

Winner of the 2022 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play for its sold-out Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC) world premiere at New York City Center, the play is set to begin performances on Broadway in December at MTC’s Samuel Friedman Theatre.

The Boston production – running through October 8 at the Huntington Theatre – is wonderfully well staged by Huntington Artistic Director Loretta Greco, who was active in the play’s development during her time as artistic director at San Francisco’s Magic Theatre. Boston audiences will recall Harmon’s earlier plays, “Bad Jews,” “Significant Other,” and “Admissions,” from their first-rate SpeakEasy Stage Company productions.

As those plays and this one demonstrate, Harmon is an adroit dramatist who not only writes believable, naturalistic dialogue but also perfectly blends comedy and drama to give approachability, depth, and meaning to his stories. Helping provide that humor and heft at the Huntington is a near-perfect 11-member cast.

In a richly nuanced portrayal, Amy Resnick captures Marcelle’s every fear and anxiety about the future and the weight of her responsibilities as a wife, mother, academic, and daughter. Nael Nacer plays Marcelle’s husband, Charles Benhamou, as a devout Jew roiled by the uncertainty of the times and the jeopardy he believes his family may be in.

Resnick is also well matched by Tony Estrella as her brother, Patrick Salomon. The at-odds siblings embody what author Samuel Butler said of family relationships, “I believe that more unhappiness comes from this source than from any other…the attempt to prolong family connections unduly and to make people hang together artificially who would never naturally do so.”

Estrella – whose character is often on the outside looking in – also provides piano and vocal on a moody rendition of the 1939 Jimmy Van Heusen ballad, “I Thought About You,” first recorded by Dinah Shore. With wistful lyrics by Johnny Mercer, the song speaks of how all-consuming love can be.

Joshua Chessin-Yudin brings considerable charm, and just a hint of nebbishness, to his Daniel Benhamoun, Marcelle and Charles’s son, while Carly Zien is marvelous as Elodie Benhamou, Daniel’s driven older sister.

At the top of act two, opposite Talia Sulla as Molly, a distant cousin from the U.S., Zien delivers a lengthy, impassioned monologue without taking a breath and with perfect enunciation. It is an impressive tour de force by Zien.

In the also well acted 1940s side of the story, we meet a long-married couple, Irma (Phyllis Kay) and Adolphe (Peter Van Wagner), whose advanced years spared them from being sent to a concentration camp, as they anxiously wait to learn the fate of their family members who were sent to the camps, their middle-aged son Lucien (Jared Troilo) and teenage grandson Pierre, who will grow up to become Marcelle and Patrick’s father, and inheritor of the family’s multi-generational business. The elderly Pierre is played with touching gravitas by the estimable Will Lyman.

Scenic designer Andrew Boyce has created a comfortably large Paris apartment set for the Salomon Benhamou family, and a dining room area used for the World War II-era scenes. In an inspired design feature, there are two separate ceilings that move up and down to put focus on where the action is at any given time.

Alex Yaeger’s costume designs are well suited to each character, with Resnick’s stylish ensembles making clear that she is every bit the chic Frenchwoman even as she contemplates leaving the country that has long been her home. Clothes can be picked up and shipped, of course, but the desire to protect your loved ones and keep them and yourself safe is something that lives inside us wherever we go.

Photo caption: The cast of The Huntington’s production of Joshua Harmon’s “Prayer for the French Republic,” directed by Huntington Artistic Director Loretta Greco. Photo by T Charles Erickson.

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