In the two years since I first saw Joshua Harmon’s ambitious, busy play about antisemitism, in which five generations of a single French family in two different eras fear for their safety, the subject has become even more timely, with a shocking rise in antisemitism in America. The incidents documented by the Anti-Defamation League — some 3,700 in 2022 alone (some five times higher than a decade ago) — have escalated exponentially since the Hamas massacre and kidnapping of Israelis on October 7, 2023
Within the past two years, there has also been a rise in New York productions that depict antisemitism. “Harmony” is currently playing right down the block on 47th Street from MTC’s Samuel Friedman Theater, where “Prayer for the French Republic” has just opened. Broadway also saw recent runs of “Just for Us,” “Parade,” and “Leopoldstadt,” while there were productions Off or Off-Off Broadway of “Amid Falling Walls,” “King of the Jews,” “The Doctor,” “Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski“, “Witness,” “Otto Frank,”
The greater urgency of the issues in the play probably explains why, seeing it now on Broadway, it feels even more stirring, enhanced by some strong performers, five of whom were also standouts in the original eleven-member cast Off-Broadway. But “Prayer for the French Republic” also suffers from comparison with some of the other recent productions. As well-constructed as many of the scenes are, there is too much going on; too much the playwright is trying to do. In its three hour-plus running time, including two intermissions, the play strives to make an epic statement, while still making room for Harmon’s signature bratty comedy.
Marcelle (Betsy Aidem) is a member of the Salomon family, Jews who have lived in France for a thousand years. Those of her relatives who survived the Holocaust, stayed. Her father Pierre (Richard Masur), in his eighties, is the fifth generation of Salomons who have owned piano stores throughout France, a business that the family began in 1855 and that Pierre rebuilt after the war
Yet, in 2016, Marcelle’s 26-year-old son, Daniel (Aria Shahghasemia) returns home with a bloodied face. Several hooligans beat him up because he was wearing a kippah, a skullcap worn by religious Jews. Marcelle, who grew up secular, has been trying to get her son to cover up his newfound devotion by taking it off when he is outside, or at least wearing a baseball cap over it. His father Charles Benhamou (Nael Nacer), soon comes up with a more drastic solution: They should move to Israel. The incident is just the latest, after all, in a darkening picture for Jews in France at the time — the shooting at Charlie
Hebdo, the newspaper, the killing of four Jews in a kosher supermarket in Paris “who were just shopping for groceries,” the possible election of right-wing politician Marine Le Pen as president of France.
Charles’s Benhamou ancestors had lived in Spain until all Jews were kicked out in 1492; the Benhamous then lived for hundreds of years in Algeria, before being forced to leave in the 1960’s. He understands why Jews have survived through thousands of years of hatred: “It’s the suitcase, or the coffin.”
This is the core story, and it’s a compelling one. But it’s crisscrossed with scenes and subplots featuring eight more characters, most of whom serve overtly dramaturgical and thematic functions.
Anthony Edwards portrays Patrick, Marcelle’s brother, who serves as the narrator. He’s resolutely secular. The offspring (like Marcelle) of a mixed marriage, he doesn’t sound like he considers himself Jewish at all, and in any case doesn’t approve of the Benhamou family’s plan to leave France, thinking they’re overreacting. Yet he recounts a series of gruesome atrocities committed against French Jews in the Middle Ages (Interestingly, Patrick’s monologue no longer brings up the 2018 massacre by a white supremacist of the worshippers in the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, as he did Off-Broadway.) Making this defiantly secular character obsessed with antisemitism is not necessarily a flaw in characterization – Harmon could be making the point that it’s precisely because of Patrick’s obsession with the details of Jew-hatred that the character wants to keep that part of his identity hidden, even from himself.
Molly Ranson portrays Molly, an American college student on her junior year abroad who is enchanted by the romance of France — the kind of woke and clueless secular American Jew that Harmon has proven adept in skewering (in such plays as Bad Jews.) Molly is a distant cousin of the Salomon family; her first visit with Marcelle and her family happens to occur on the day that the antisemites have bloodied Daniel, and she silently witnesses the angry argument that ensues between Daniel and his mother, which Charles attempts to end by begging “please….let’s have dinner.” After a long pause, Molly pipes up: “I don’t know if I mentioned, I’m a vegetarian?” Audience laughter. End of scene.
Molly is the outsider to whom Marcelle and her family explain things the playwright wants the audience to know. She winds up injecting a little romantic comedy into the play; she and Daniel fall for another, although the courtship is not a major focus.
She also expresses her view that Israel is not a place to which the Benhamou family should move: “I’m not sure what the word is in French, maybe it’s the same: apartheid?” This provokes a sarcastic rebuke from Daniel’s sister, Elodie Benhamou (portrayed by actress named coincidentally Francis Benhamou) – and an opportunity in the exchange between the two young women to lay out the general debate over Israel and the Palestinians. Elodie represents another typical fixture in a Harmon comedy (best represented by the teenager Charlie in Admissions.) — the garrulous character given to long arias that are comic in their breathlessness, but simultaneously intended as serious insight.
Similarly, the family members express their serious disagreements on occasion by shouting at one another — sometimes comically, sometimes angrily, often indecipherably. This is a family that spends its Passover Seder as Patrick puts it, “one-quarter eating, three quarters arguing.” Director David Cromer is known for his delicate touch, in such works as Our Town Off-Broadway and Broadway’s Tony-winning musical, The Band’s Visit, but is unable to get these scenes under control — which, to be fair, are the exceptions in a production with acting of often exceptional clarity.
The remaining characters are members of the Salomon family living in France during World War II. In scenes from 1944 to 1946 that alternate with the ones from 2016 and 2017, we see Patrick and Marcelle’s great-grandparents Adolphe and Irma (Daniel Oreskes and Nancy Robinette) in their home in Paris, where they were miraculously left alone during the war, but knew enough never to venture out into the streets, and always to keep the windows covered. They wait and wait for word of the family members who weren’t lucky. Finally their son Lucien (Ari Brand) comes back, along with Lucien’s son, 15-year-old Pierre (Ethan Haberfield), both having survived Auschwitz.
I found these Holocaust-era scenes largely inert and unnecessary when I first saw “Prayer for the French Republic” Off-Broadway, and, along with the weirdly sentimental and contrived ending, led me to see the play as a work in progress – a worthwhile play in need of work. But very little has changed in its Broadway transfer. Despite some beautifully performed moments by Oreskes and Robinette, those scenes now seem even more of a mistake, especially in light of what’s been rendered on other stages. The elder Pierre, now played briefly but masterfully by Masur, could have supplied all the historical context that the play needed.
“Three fourths of the French Jews survived,” the elderly Pierre points out near the end. “You know what a high percentage that is? It was so much worse in Poland, in Germany, Czechoslovakia, Greece. France is the one of the best.” And yet here he was, talking to his descendants, who felt the need to escape the country.
Prayer for the French Republic
MTC’s Samuel J. Friedman Theater through February 18. Extended to March 3
Running time: Three hours and 15 minutes including two intermissions.
Tickets: $94-$298
Written by Joshua Harmon
Directed by David Cromer
Scenic Design by Takeshi Kata; Costume Design by Sarah Laux; Lighting Design by Amith Chandrashaker; Sound Design by Daniel Kluger; Hair Design by J. Jared Janas; Make-Up Design by J. Jared Janas
Cast: Betsy Aidem as Marcelle Salomon Benhamou, Francis Benhamou as Elodie Benhamou, Ari Brand as Lucien Salomon, Anthony Edwards as Patrick Salomon, Ethan Haberfield as Young Pierre Salomon, Richard Masur as Pierre Salomon, Nael Nacer as Charles Benhamou, Daniel Oreskes as Adolph Salomon, Molly Ranson as Molly, Nancy Robinette as Irma Salomon, Aria Shahghasemi as Daniel Benhamou.
