Death, destiny and love in ‘Handle with Care’

Two people who don’t speak the same language manage to communicate and, ultimately, fall in love as the play “Handle With Care” unfolds at The Colony Theatre in Burbank.

Author Jason Odell Williams said he wrote the play, his first, in 2008 as a vehicle for his Israeli wife, Charlotte Cohn. He recalled asking her what kind of role she’d like to play, and she told him she’d always been fascinated by people who have trouble communicating with others.

“I thought, ‘Let’s have you speak Hebrew and be somewhere where not a lot of people can understand you.’ ” Williams said. “I had heard a story about how, in Israel, you’re supposed to bury a dead body within 24 hours, and I thought that was an interesting concept, and one I wasn’t familiar with. I looked more into that, and I thought, ‘What if there’s a dead body, and this woman can’t be understood, and she’s stuck somewhere in America?’ It just kind of started from there.”  

The story takes place in a small-town motel in Virginia on Christmas Eve, 2008. Ayelet (Cohn), a young Israeli woman who speaks virtually no English, is berating delivery truck driver Terrence (Jeff Marlow) in Hebrew because he has lost the coffin containing her grandmother, who died within the past day. Unable to understand her, Terrence enlists the aid of his friend, Josh (Tyler Pierce), a former college professor who is half-Jewish (and still mourning his late wife). Josh doesn’t speak Hebrew — yet, through gestures, a few mutually understood words and a growing attraction, he and Ayelet form a budding romance.

Cohn said she believes that, in every walk of life, there are differences people have to overcome to communicate with one another. “I think one of the main themes in this show is that, even if you come from very different backgrounds, you can still find the path to love,” she said.

“Jason and I, in our personal life, had to overcome very different backgrounds. I spoke English, but, still, I’m Israeli and Jewish, and he’s American and not Jewish.”

Williams has a Catholic mother and a Protestant father and said he patterned the character of Josh, who is the product of a Jewish mother and a “lapsed Catholic” father, somewhat after himself.

Cohn was born of a Danish-Jewish father, who escaped to Sweden during World War II, and a mother who is a sabra. “She was born and raised in Israel,” Cohn said. “So she lived in Israel before it was even Israel. She’s lived through every war.” 

“I’m the youngest of four girls,” Cohn said. “We were all born in Denmark, and we lived there for a while. Then my mom missed Israel a lot, and her family. My father was a Zionist Jew, a religious Jew, and he was excited to make aliyah. So we moved to Israel when I was only 5 years old.”

As is required of all young people in Israel, Cohn entered the military when she was 18. She served for five years, became a tank commander with some 2,000 men under her leadership, and attained the rank of lieutenant. She said she saw combat and then went into intelligence, and is not allowed to talk about her service. She was discharged in 1992 and came to America to study opera and pursue a career as a performer.  

She and Williams met at the Actors Studio Drama School in New York and married right after graduation in 2001. They now have a 9-year-old daughter. Cohn said that the series of events leading to their meeting and marrying may look coincidental, but she believes their coming together was meant to be. On the other hand, Williams said he vacillates between believing that we are all subject to random events and feeling that there may be something guiding our lives. That issue is another central theme of “Handle With Care.”

Part of the play is told in flashback. We watch the interaction of the previous day between Ayelet and her grandmother, Edna (Marcia Rodd), who has come to America from Israel in search of a long-lost youthful love. She brought her granddaughter with her, because Ayelet apparently hasn’t been herself since a breakup with her own boyfriend. (Their dialogue, which is understood to be in Hebrew, is spoken in English.) The revelations about Edna’s old flame that come at the play’s end, as Ayelet and Josh are falling in love after Edna’s death, seem to suggest that the newly kindled romance may be an act of fate.

“All of these little random decisions that you make,” Williams said, “lead to this other point in time, and you can trace anything back that way. Is it just the human mind deciding to assign meaning to things, or is there some sort of divine intervention — is there some sort of path? I don’t know the answer. To me, that is the universal question and a theme that I try [to] explore in the play.” 

Williams said his main goal is just to entertain people, but added, “If you are feeling anything, hopefully it’s laughter, or just joy, and then maybe even some tears and sadness, and heartwarming feelings — and, as long as you’re never bored, I’m happy.”

“Handle With Care” runs Nov. 8 through Dec. 14 (no performances Nov. 27-30), Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 3 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. at The Colony Theatre, 555 N. 3rd St, Burbank. Tickets: 818-558-7000, ext. 15 or https://colonytheatre.org/ticketform.html