Jackie Hoffman has spent much of the last few years—minus the theater shutdown horror—playing Yentl in the Joel Grey-directed Yiddish production of Fiddler on the Roof. Apparently, she hasn’t had enough of the classic.
Here she is at the cell, that compact off-Broadway venue, doing her absolute best in a Fiddler on the Roof spin. She’s playing the Fiddler character Fruma-Sarah in E. Dale Smith’s Fruma-Sarah (Waiting in the Wings), a just-about-entirely-successful 80-minute two-hander.
More precisely, the busy Hoffman, also racking up praised television appearances these days, isn’t playing Fruma-Sarah. She’s playing Ariana Russo, a Roselle Park, New Jersey actress and real estate broker, who’s playing Fruma-Sarah in a Roselle Park Theatrical Society revival of the beloved musical. (Or is Ariana not from the very real Roselle Park, New Jersey but from nearby Maplewood? This reviewer is uncertain.)
Once a prominent Society official, Ariana has been assigned the three-minute Fruma-Sarah role for her sins. Those center around a negative attitude towards just about everything the Society has been up to. They also involve her increasing dependence on the silver flask from which she openly guzzles bourbon. (She dislikes Scotch.) She’s especially unnerved about Annie O’Brien, who’s been pulling down the major assignments Ariana believes should be hers—Fiddler’s Golde this time.
It’s Annie who’s onstage while Ariana sits in the wings, rigged for her brief flying stint and with nothing better to do than grouse through her 107-minute wait to begin soaring. All the while she’s dressed in what she calls her “ostrich nest” costume. That would be costume designer Bobby Goodrich’s hilariously gauzy, frilly, floaty notion of what a returning Anatevka ghost will wear.
Fruma-Sarah follows one of two standard playwrighting techniques. In one the playwright draws the audience along without signaling where the action is headed. In the other, the audience realizes, usually quickly, where the action is aimed and only continues to be carried along by how well the playwright does the getting there.
It’s the second technique with which Fruma-Sarah aligns. Any show-wise patron twigs early to where and how Ariana’s dramatic travels will end. (No specifics revealed here for those who don’t do the reckoning.) It’s also fairly clear from the get-go that Ariana’s unmitigated, often show-biz cynicism will eventually transform into troubled self-disregard.
Smith turns out to be quite accomplished at keeping an audience ahead of him in one way and continually engaged in another. Ariana has a strong sense of humor, even wit. Yet, she’s a woman at the end of her tether, literally. The rope to which she’s pinned says as much. Smith also gives a clever, eye-popping twist to just how far the rigged Ariana’s loathing and despair stretches
The other hand present in the two-hander is Margo Peterson (Kelly Kinsella), who does need a very firm hand as a substitute staffer. It’s her task to, uh, handle Fruma-Sarah’s stage flying. Aside from initially hooking her charge into place, Margo also has only three minutes of duty. Otherwise, she must endure Ariana’s verbal attacks on anything and anybody. That includes Margo herself. A woman not easily cowed, she stands up to abuse and even gets in sufficient digs by telling the complaining Ariana about the Society’s disapproving—that’s to say, fed up—attitude towards her.
Smith is particularly smart on Margo, giving her some troubles of her own and allowing her to work them out a bit. Not unlike Ariana, she is up against obstacles at home, not the least of them a rebellious son. Toward the finish, the playwright gives Margo a touching sequence that Kinsella acquits with the precise understanding required.
Nevertheless, Fruma-Sarah, crisply directed by Braden M Burns, remains Jackie Hoffman’s vehicle. New York audiences who’ve watched her for some time are undoubtedly familiar with her as the kind of character actor exactly right when extended wisecracking is called for. She always, always gets her laughs—often when the laugh lines as written aren’t so hot. That’s how naturally funny she is.
This outing, Hoffman is asked to do more, to dig deeper into the distressed Ariana’s psyche, to reveal the increasingly loosening mental seams. Still wearing glasses of the sort frequently handed the heroine’s best friend, she meets Smith’s demands, She proves herself more than prepared to take on the roles that used to be mastered by someone like, say, Eileen Heckart. No wonder she agreed to this script and its A to Z gamut. She runs it with effortless prowess.
Fruma-Sarah (Waiting in the Wings) opened July 8, 2021, and runs through July 25 at the cell theatre. Information and tickets: frumasarah.com
