If you had been raised in a Ukrainian shtetl, survived the Warsaw Ghetto by hiding in the sewers, sailed on the Exodus and ended up as a hotelier in Miami Beach, you’d probably have a lot to say about life, love and sorrow.
That’s the précis of “Rose,” a one-woman show now playing at Traveling Jewish Theatre in San Francisco (and soon to travel to Berkeley and Mountain View).
The one woman is TJT co-founder/ensemble member Naomi Newman, and as Rose she is at the top of her game. It may be old hat to Newman to hold a rapt audience in the palm of her hand, but it never gets old for theatergoers, including the appreciative ones that packed the house on opening night Sunday, Jan. 7.
Sherman’s play is basic autobiography, peppered with plenty of humor. Most striking, though, is the tiny canvas on which “Rose” is staged: For virtually the entire two-act play, the thrice-widowed Rose sits shiva on a wooden bench, and barely moves.
Addressing the audience directly, Newman unspools the life of 80-year-old Rose, starting in her Ukrainian village under the thumb of an impassive mother and a sickly father. As a restless teen she runs off to Warsaw, falls in love with a lusty one-eyed Jewish redhead, marries and has a daughter.
With the Nazi invasion, the family is herded into the ghetto. Rose lands a factory job to help feed her starving family, but the Holocaust hits hard soon enough, wiping out her family and leaving Rose to survive by hiding in the sewers. After the war, she languishes in a displaced persons camp before the Hagganah smuggles her aboard the famed ship Exodus on its doomed voyage to Palestine.
On board, Rose meets a genial American who woos and wins her hand, but not her heart. The couple sails west for a new life in Atlantic City.
As much as Act One gallops along, Act Two bogs down a bit with Rose’s domestic life in America. After such searing wartime experiences, stories of her sexual adventures do not prove as interesting, despite Newman’s ribald delivery.
Rose’s observations about Judaism and her Jewish heritage are uniformly astute. Judaism’s greatest gift to mankind, she says, is “asking questions that have no answers.”
The play strays uneasily close to polemic with the story of Rose’s frum daughter-in-law sticking up for Baruch Goldstein, the Jewish mass murderer who attacked worshippers at a Hebron mosque in 1994. Not that Goldstein’s actions are in any way defensible, but in terms of the drama, Rose’s PC pronouncements seem forced.
Sherman saves several juicy surprises for the final minutes, tying together various threads and lending to the play — and Rose — a fitting coda to a life well lived.
The play’s few faults are entirely Sherman’s. In portraying Rose in all her dimensions, the playwright overdoes Rose’s sexcapades, bordering on the salacious for salaciousness’ sake. And for all her life trauma, Rose emerges remarkably, perhaps unbelievably, unscathed, kind of like Sophie of “Sophie’s Choice” without the suicidal tendencies.
Likewise, Rose’s foray into hippiedom — including hooking up with a much younger lover and his pot-smoking rock ‘n’ roll band — seems far-fetched. And a miraculous twist late in Act Two comes off a bit too twisty.
But credit Sherman with giving Rose a great sense of humor. Recalling her idyllic shtel girlhood, at one point she wonders aloud if she’s really remembering it, or just thinking of “Fiddler on the Roof.” Rose is a cut-up, but a mortally wounded one. She sits shiva for good reasons.
Joan Mankin’s direction is appropriately understated, with subtle touches of light and sound evoking far away memories. She wisely leaves the heavy lifting to Newman, who pulls it off with aplomb.
Newman may have remained seated for two hours, but it was the audience that stood, cheering, at the end.
“Rose” plays 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, Jan. 4-28, at Traveling Jewish Theatre, 470 Florida Street, S.F., Feb. 1-11, at Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro St., Mtn. View. Feb. 15-25, at the Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave., Berkeley. Tickets: $15 – $44. Information: (415) 522-0786 ext. 2.