For Jeri Lynn Cohen, co-starring in Wendy Wasser- stein’s comedy “The Sisters Rosensweig” isn’t just a great acting opportunity. It’s personal.
Both she and the late Jewish playwright attended Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts back in the 1970s, though a few years apart. When Cohen starred in a 1979 college production
of Wasserstein’s “Uncommon Women,” the playwright sent her a raccoon coat right out of her closet to wear on stage.
“It was a loaner,” recalls Cohen. “That was deeply meaningful to me. I continued to cross paths with her. It’s so interesting to come back to her now.”
The Jewish Theatre, San Francisco (formerly Traveling Jewish Theatre) will stage two previews and eight performances of “The Sisters Rosensweig” starting Jan. 22 in Kanbar Hall at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco.
Set around the time of the fall of the Soviet Union and loosely imitative of Anton Chekhov’s “The Three Sisters,” the play follows the Rosensweigs as they gather with friends and family to celebrate the birthday of Sara, the eldest sister (played by Cohen).
Wasserstein takes aim at sexual politics, parenting, feminism, gefilte fish and even Motown music over the course of the play, which even boasts Aristotelian unities of time and place. All three sisters are accomplished, forceful women, but they also struggle with self-doubt and identity.
Including their Jewish identity.
“It’s the reason why the Jewish Theatre would do this play,” says director Aaron Davidman. “Questions of Jewish identity framed in a contemporary narrative are what we’re most interested in. Add to that questions about the complexity of the modern woman, and it’s an important play.”
It’s also hilarious. Wasserstein once wrote that at the very first preview in 1992, she was taken aback by the laughs, since she believed she had written a dark play. Though with an original Broadway cast that included Jane Alexander, future Oscar winner Frances McDormand and the late Madeline Kahn (playing the wondrously named Gorgeous Rosensweig Teitelbaum), Wasserstein shouldn’t have been surprised.
Then there are the memorable lines, such as when Sara’s college-age daughter, Tess, says of her mother’s stuffy suitor: “He’s one of those weirdo English bankers who takes 16-year-old models to dinner at Annabel’s and then goes home alone and puts pantyhose over his head and dances to ‘Parsifal.’ ”
But the laughs are only the beginning, according to Davidman.
“As I work on it, it’s grown on me,” he says. “On first read it’s fun, intelligent and funny. You can imagine why it was a Broadway hit. But as we all started to work on it, I was moved by it. It’s very touching, and a meaningful exploration of relationships.”
Many of Wasserstein’s plays examine modern Jewish American life, though perhaps none more so than “The Sisters Rosensweig.” The original production earned an Outer Critics Award and Tony nomination for Wasserstein. She had already won the Tony and Pulitzer Prize for “The Heidi Chronicles.”
As honored as Wasserstein was in life (she died of cancer in 2006), few of her plays have been staged in San Francisco in recent years.
Davidman wanted to remedy that with this new production, which stars local actors Nancy Carlin and Deb Fink as the other sisters. “Given someone so beloved in the American theater and the Jewish community in particular, it’s amazing it’s taken this long to have a sizeable production,” he says. “I’m really proud to bring that forward. She needs to be heard.”
Cohen agrees, especially regarding this play. She says it had troubled her to see Wasserstein seemingly back away from Jewish identity in plays from her middle period, but that she came roaring back with “The Sisters Rosensweig.”
“It bothered me,” Cohen says. “Characters based on herself became not Jewish, not overweight, but tall, thin white-bread people. I realized coming back to this play, this is the one where she is taking on [Jewish identity] really deeply.”
For Cohen (who starred as Linda Loman in TJT’s 2007 production of “Death of a Salesman”), the experience of working with a crack ensemble is one of the great perks of acting.
“The cast is just super,” she says. “[Sarah Schwartz], the girl playing my daughter looks more like my daughter than my daughter.”
“The Sisters Rosensweig” begins previews Thursday, Jan. 7 and runs through Jan. 17 at Kanbar Hall at the JCCSF, 3200 California St., S.F.: $24-$34. Information: (415) 292-1233 or www.jccsf.org.