The Electric Lodge Theater in Venice was packed on the final day of the production, March 2, following 13 successful performances. Filling a theater in Los Angeles—a city where people typically flock to the cinema rather than live theater—is quite an accomplishment.
Playwright Dennis Danziger wrote his play back in the day, after he arrived in Los Angeles in the hopes to write comic for TV, which he did for about a decade. Then in 1979, his friend, a screenwriter invited him to lunch at Canter’s and asked him what story he has to tell.
“So I told him this story about a Thanksgiving weekend I had with my parents in 1977 when I was 26 years-old and he said, “ok. Go home and start writing.”
What started as a fleeting anecdote shared with a friend at Canter’s deli in Los Angeles eventually blossomed into a full-fledged play after decades of rewrites.
“I came back to it ten years ago and started working on it in earnest, I knew there was a story there, I knew it was a pivotal moment in my life with my parents and I knew it needed to be recorded.”
The play centers on three characters, Benny (Jonah Robinson) a 26-year-old and his parents, Isaac (Rick Zieff) and mother, Miriam (Wendy Hammers). Benny is called home by his mother, who is desperate for help. Her husband has been unraveling emotionally after selling his business, The Abelson Since 1946.
“He lives in his bathrobe,” Miriam tells her son. “Doesn’t go out. Repeats the same mishegoss like a broken record.”
Miriam decided to leave her husband, if only for a month and go to Florida on a vacation and she hopes that Benny will take care of his dad.
Now the question is if Benny will agree to leave his not very successful job as a cartoonist in NY and move back home. It’s clear that the relationship between father and son are not the greatest. Isaac keeps writing him checks to help Benny stay afloat and doesn’t think much of his sons’ career path, he is also not happy with his choice of catholic girls.
The story is more than just a family drama—it is a reflection of the tension between cultural tradition and modernity. As Isaac, a World War II veteran, clings to the stability he worked his entire life to build, Benny embraces risk and artistic freedom, much to his father’s frustration.
“I grew up Orthodox in Texas and it was a struggle because I was a good student and athlete,” said Danziger. “There was a struggle between being a normal American and then I’d go home and it was very traditional Jewish—unlike any of my friends – even my Jewish friends. It was always a struggle for me, am I Jewish, American, where do I land?”
Most of his stories as a result, said Danziger, has that struggle, a man struggling with where he lands within his religion and culture.
Denziger was a teacher in LAUSD for 24 years, with the first two at Crenshaw and 12 years at Palisades Charter high school and the last 10 at Dumas. He taught playwright at the Skirball and he is also an author who published a few books, including ‘A Short History of a Tall Jew’ and ‘Daddy, The Diary of an Expectant Father’.
His bio page also reveals that he is a board member and volunteer for POPS the club, a non-profit he co-founded to support teenagers with incarcerate loved ones.
Danziger reflected on the reactions of audiences, noting that people from all walks of life find themselves moved by the universal themes explored in the play.
“I had one former student, one who’s Latina, who wrote me a letter afterwards saying that each act of the play was part of her family’s life story,” said Danziger. “I had an African American student whose mom, sitting in front of me at the end of the play, turned to me and said, ‘That’s the only family I know.’”
The play, though rooted in Jewish tradition, resonates far beyond its cultural context. “People think it’s a Jewish family play, but I just think of it as a family play,” he said.
When asked what his parents would have said about the play if they were alive today, Danziger laughed and said: “I think my mother would’ve seen herself in the play because, at a certain time after the children were grown, she really needed more freedom. I think she would’ve appreciated it and would’ve felt seen. I think my father, who was often angry, would’ve been angry. But in the end, because it really is a love story to him, he may’ve recognized how much I loved him, even though it was never expressed because of money problems, personal problems, or living with an uncle who had physical problems. Watching the play may’ve been shocking to them, but in the end, I think they would’ve been happy.”
The play was directed masterfully by director Mathew Levitt who had been working with Danziger on plays previously. The three actors did a phenomenal job portraying a family dynamics as long-held grievances rise to the surface. Zieff’s portrayal of Isaac as a disheveled, emotionally broken man, who hit his forehead in frustration and anguish is very believable and so is Hammers’s portrayal of Miriam from her line delivery to her body language. At the start of the play, she is doing crosswords and then picking up a speck of dirt from the floor, then throwing it in the trash – It feels like we are right there in the kitchen with her.
“One night, a man came out afterwards, I didn’t know him, a tall man in his 40s wearing a yarmulke, and he introduced himself, shook my hand and said, “Yeshar Koach” (good job in Yiddish),” said Danziger. “And I thought, “Thanks. I hadn’t heard that since I was a kid. I thought it was a nice end to that evening.”
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