Bad Jews

“How religion poisons everything” is the sub-title of the late Christopher Hitchens’s “God is not Great,” his 2007 book about his intellectual journey toward a secular view of life based on science and religion. Hitchens’s title came to mind while I was watching Bad Jews, Joshua Harmon’s ferocious family drama, unfold at The Odyssey Theater. If ever there was a play that depicted religion’s malignant effect on the human race, Bad Jews is it.

Set in a studio apartment in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the play looks at four young people who have gathered there on the eve of the funeral of the family patriarch, Poppy, who was a Holocaust survivor. Two of the youngsters are brothers, Jonah (Austin Rogers) and Liam (Noah James). The latter is a rebel where Judaism is concerned; not only is he militantly non-observant, he has a gentile girlfriend, Melody (Lila Hood). Scornful of this blonde, naïve, sweet-natured shiksa is Daphna Feygenbaum (Jeanette Deutsch). Daphna is a self-professed “super-Jew,” a loud, motor-mouthed girl who is not only proud of her religion but fights like hell to keep it alive and pure. The one she fights the hardest is Liam, who is every bit as smart, tough and angry as she is. Caught between them is Jonah, a low-key, affable guy who has been forced into the role of peace-maker.

There is no possibility of peace in this household, though. Daphna and Liam’s antagonism goes way back to childhood and is shot through with loathing and disapproval, most of it having to do with how they practice their Judaism. Both characters are shrill, loud and self-righteous. They get under your skin from the git-go (and are sometimes allowed by the director to go way over the top), but their passion and fury also make for good drama, protagonist and antagonist going at with equal force, fighting with everything in them to best the other. That they also use bitterly comic Jewish humor to wound each other is another plus; Bad Jews is a very funny play.

There isn’t much plot to follow; most of the action stems from Daphna’s attack on Liam for having missed Poppy’s death in hospital because he was skiing in Aspen with his “grotesque Bambi girlfriend.” Liam, defending himself, explains that a snowstorm made him miss his flight. But his guilty feelings are exacerbated by the reception he and Melody get when they arrive on the West Side and discover they must spend the night on an air mattress in close proximity to his hated cousin. To get back at her for calling him a bad Jew, he brandishes the chai his grandfather left him, a religious heirloom that Poppy kept under his tongue while he was in a Nazi concentration-camp.

Daphna has a conniption over this revelation, insisting that she should have been given the chi, as a reward for being the only good Jew in the family. Imagine her outrage when Liam announces he is going to give Melody the chi, as an engagement present.

Bad Jews premiered at New York’s Roundabout Underground black box in 2012, soon transferring to Roundabout’s 424-seat off-Broadway theater the following year. After that, it became the most-produced play in the USA for the next few years. Its satirical take on faith and family touched a nerve with audiences across the country, and it’s no different with this production at the Odyssey.

Thanks to its superb cast, excellent direction and stagecraft (especially David Offner’s spot-on set), Bad Jews is once again doing its best to give religion a bad name.