Playwright Hadar Galron gets right to the point in her “Mikveh” at Theater J. We learn immediately that this incisive drama, set in an Ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in contemporary Israel, will reveal secrets about the closed world of the Jewish ritual bath, or mikveh. We sense right away that the play will be about different ways of seeing the same event.
If you go
“Mikveh”
Where: Theater J, Washington D.C. Jewish Community Center, 1529 16th St. NW
When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday; 8 p.m. Saturday; 3 p.m. Sunday; through June 5
Info: $30 to $55; boxofficetickets.com; theaterj.org
Only gradually does it become clear that the mikveh is only an excuse, a locus that joins together eight women who either want the world to stay as it always has been or who insist that the world must change. Those women represent various classes and social views. The bath attendant who sets the original tone for this mikveh, Shoshana, (Sarah Marshall), is bossy and old-fashioned; she expects her word will be taken as law.
Esti (Helen Pafumi) is a naive young wife who seems more interested in the role of the mikveh as a purification ritual preceding sex, than she is in the bath itself. The carefully dressed, upper-class Hindi (Kimberly Schraf) attends the mikveh because it is required, rather than because it is a religious habit to cherish.
But when a new bath attendant, Shira (Lise Bruneau) arrives on the scene to help Shoshana, things change radically. Shira insists that Chedva (Carla Briscoe) stop lying about the physical abuse she suffers. She helps a young bride, Tehila (Amal Saade), who is terrified of her upcoming arranged marriage.
Shira also befriends an outspoken, secular pop singer, Miki (Tonya Beckman Ross), who goes to the bath because her husband wants her to. And she bonds with Chedva’s young daughter, Elisheva (Rachel Condliffe), who refuses to speak. As soon as Shira’s liberal attitudes are thrown into the mikveh atmosphere, sparks fly.
The above-mentioned actresses create a powerful ensemble, capable of delivering the underlying political, social and generational messages in Galron’s play. Smoothly directed by Shirley Serotsky, this “Mikveh” concisely reflects Galron’s razor-sharp attitudes toward many subjects, from gossip to feminism and masculine oppression.
On Kinereth Kisch’s set, the front of the stage represents the waiting room of the bath, where everything-floor, chairs, desk — is light gray: hard plastic, metal or tile. At the rear upper half of the stage behind a scrim is the bath itself, with room for an attendant and bather to stand and stairs for the bather to descend into the water and immerse herself.
There everything is blue and soft, with Dan Covey’s effective lighting creating a sense of moving water. It’s a marvelous visual collision of the play’s essential conflict, between the modern enlightened drive for the clean lines of intelligence and honesty, and the ancient, hallowed reverence for religion and tradition.
Galron excels in many areas in this play, especially in her knack for making the comic coexist with the serious. But the real appeal of this “Mikveh” is the way in which Galron’s original premise transcends itself and eight unrelated women become a community capable of doing something that none of them could accomplish individually.
