Susan Granger’s review of “The Wanderers” (Off-Broadway at Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theatre)
While Katie Holmes is best known for “Dawson’s Creek,” she’s no stranger to the New York stage, having made her Broadway debut in Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons” with John Lithgow, Dianne Wiest and Patrick Wilson; she also starred in Theresa Rebeck’s “Dead Accounts” opposite Norbert Lee Butz and Judy Greer.
Now in Anna Ziegler’s “The Wanderers” at the Off-Broadway Laura Pels Theatre, Katie Holmes is playing Julia Cheever, a glamorous movie star who causes chaos when she sends an e-mail to acclaimed novelist, igniting an infatuation that threatens his marriage and raises questions about happiness within a relationship.
The poignant, five-character drama focuses on two couples who live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in different time periods. One marriage involves two contemporary secular Jewish writers and the other a 1970s pre-arranged union between two young Hasidic Jews.
Having won a Pulitzer Prize and two National Book Awards before he was 30, Abe (Eddie Kaye Thomas) is married to frustrated Sophie (Sarah Cooper), whose first book was a critical and commercial disaster. They’ve known each other all their lives since their mothers were close friends who both left the cloistered Hasidic community. They have two children and are contemplating a third.
Years before, Orthodox Jews Esther (Lucy Freyer) and Schmuli (Dave Klasko), who barely met before their wedding day, come to realize their future is dictated by the strict laws of the Torah. But Esther is chafing at the confines of being a dutiful stay-at-home wife yearning, instead, for an independent identity as a librarian.
Utilizing scenes from these parallel relationships, the perennial question posed by playwright Anna Ziegler is: Can we be happy with what we have while we have it?
Or, as Sophie says, “It can take a lifetime just to grow up…to let go of a sort of galvanizing restlessness that always leaves your empty.”
Subtly and sensitively directed by Barry Edelstein, Artistic Director of San Diego’s Old Globe, where Ziegler’s play premiered in 2018, it’s filled with spiritual and emotional questioning, centering on Jewish life in its various aspects.
Edelstein’s superbly cast ensemble production is enhanced by Marion Williamson’s shape-shifting, book-constructed set, exquisitely lit by Kenneth Posner.
In a limited engagement, “The Wanderers” is presented without an intermission at the Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theatre in the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre (111 West 46th Street) through April 2, 2023.