A collision of cultural extremes results in the mystery of a missing American teen in Wendy Graf’s latest play, ‘Behind the Gates,’ directed by David Gautreaux, now at the Marilyn Monroe Theatre at the Lee Strasberg Creative Center in West Hollywood through July 3. Graf, a Mandeville Canyon resident and a member of Kehillat Israel Reconstructionist Congregation, is best known for such works as ‘Lessons’ and ‘Leipzig.’ The PaliHi graduate returns with ‘Gates,’ a meditation on the perils of religious fervor, using Judiasm as a metaphor for dogma and the oppression of women in orthodoxy of any religion. The play opens in Los Angeles with 17-year-old Bethany (Annika Marks), a rage-filled, drug-using troubled goth teen, unleashing a profanity-laced soliloquy to the audience in which she explains that her adoptive Jewish-American parents”the Leibermans (James Eckhouse and Keliher Walsh)”are derailing her life by shipping her off to Israel for the summer to straighten her out. Bethany complains that she even got a job ‘bagging groceries at Gelson’s”not easy to get!’ Once in Jerusalem, we see Bethany the metalhead transform before our very eyes into a frum (‘devout’) young woman as she warms up to her new environs with its customs and rules, literally shedding her death-metal tee and black makeup for the modest clothes of one of the mavens of the ultra-Orthodox haredi community. ‘It’s kind of cool, they have values,’ Bethany, now ‘Bakol,’ tells the audience. By the end of her transformation, the pendulum has swung in the other direction. She wants to live in Israel among the haredi, never to return to America: ‘I’m not going back! They can’t make me!’ Then she goes missing. Rumor has it the newlywed had fled the religious community to escape her abusive husband. Act two consists of the Leibermans’ search for their missing daughter, in which they cross paths with Israeli private investigator Ami Dayan (Steven Robert Wollenberg) and the American Embassy’s Donald Stone. Along the way, the search for the missing Bethany strains the Leibermans’ marriage, as Mr. Leiberman opts to abandon the search and return to the U.S. The play’s surprise does not come with the inevitable if they find her but how they find her and whether or not she wants to come home and live her parents again. The stand-out, spot-on performance is delivered by Wollenberg as the bald investigator Dayan. Every time his character is on stage”with his mix of Israeli matter-of-fact seriousness and gallows humor”the proceedings perk up. (Perhaps partially because Graf, in real life, has 15 years of experience as a California state-licensed private investigator). Marks, as a vessel of exposition, does a formidable job carrying the bulk of the play’s themes on her back (although her voice was noticeably hoarse from previous performances). ‘Gates’ is a play about extremes, echoing the similarly themed book ‘Chosen by God: A Brother’s Journey’ by Joshua Hammer (a family member’s search for a relative sucked into an ultra-Orthodox cult). The underlying problem with ‘Gates’ is that, as is, the story is devoid of any nuances or positive images when it comes to the Orthodox Jewry. While it’s not to refute the fact that religious extremism and the repression of women exists in that community, to put it on the same plane as some of the radical Muslim circles seems far-fetched. In order to draw a parallel between extremism in the Jewish sector with that of other cultures, the Orthodox Jewish representations here are flattened. ‘Behind the Gates’ also stars Oren Rehany, Robyn Roth and Nicholas Mongiardo-Cooper, each in multiple roles. All of the technical details are the minimalist set design of sheer white curtains and ‘Jersusalem stone’ (Stephanie Kerley Schwartz). (Graf and Schwartz”also a Kehillat Israel member”will discuss the play after a special performance on Saturday, June 5, at 8 p.m. For more information, visit kehillatisrael.org/readmore.php?id=2454) Behind the Gates, produced by Racquel Lehrman/Theatre Planners and presented by Hatikva Productions in association with the Lee Strasberg Creative Center, continues Fri.-Sat., 8 pm; Sun., 2 pm; through July 3. Tickets: $25. Marilyn Monroe Theatre, 7936 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood; 323.960.5772 or plays411.com/gates.
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