Jake Meyer, a Jew from Latvia, escapes conscription into the Russian Army by emigrating to America, landing first in New York, but winding up in Oklahoma,  where he and his bride Hattie are the only Jews. “We’re the only ones, but…these people don’t know what a Jew is, so they don’t have any prejudice against us.”

“How can we keep a Kosher home and celebrate the holidays if there are no other Jews?” Hattie asks.

It’s one of the intriguing questions left largely unanswered in “Oklahoma Samovar,” which spans a century in the lives of one Jewish family. Inspired by the stories that playwright Alice Eve Cohen heard about her own ancestors, the play promises a fresh angle on a familiar story of Jewish immigrants in America. Despite some tantalizing moments, though, “Oklahoma Samovar” fully delivers neither the breadth of a sweeping epic nor the depth of a moving family drama.   

Framed as a mystery, the play begins in 1987 with a 21-year-old New York college student named Emily (Nadia Diamond) sitting at a stranger’s kitchen table in Oklahoma holding a funeral urn. 

“The day after Mom died, I found a letter she wrote that says, ‘When I die, I want my ashes scattered over Sylvia’s farm in Chandler, Oklahoma.’”  The letter left her intrigued, she tells Sylvia (Joyce Cohen) in her farmhouse, having tracked her down and flown to Chandler. Who is Sylvia, what is her connection to her mother; why Chandler, Oklahoma? 

“I’ll need to start way back,” Sylvia says. “A century ago.”

But Sylvia has already just told Emily she’s her great aunt, the sister of Emily’s grandmother Rose. Sylvia and Rose grew up on the farm in Chandler that Jake acquired during the Oklahoma Land Run of 1889. So, right off, we’re less intrigued than we’re supposed to be. The questions we have are not Emily’s, but rather: How could Emily not know about her grandmother? (Is there some reason she never talked about her?) Why does Sylvia have to go back a century when it seems obvious why Emily’s mother would want to be buried along with her family.

The twenty scenes that follow start in 1887 and work their way back to 1987.  Director Eric Nightengale gives the production the feel of story theater, with the six members of the cast portraying multiple characters in fast-moving scenes, with quick costume changes, minimal sets and some (albeit paltry) puppetry. (The acting is uneven, with Joyce Cohen by far the stand-out in her five different roles, from toddler to nonagenerian)

 Most engaging are the early scenes with Jake (Sahar Lev-Shomer) and Hattie (Sarah Chalfie), which dramatize some fascinating, little-known history of Jews on the frontier. Hattie arrives in America lugging a feather bed and a humungous samovar (which means “self-boiler” in Russian, and is used for making tea.)

Her mother had insisted that both were a requirement for any bride, and the two items (especially the bulky elegant samovar) offer a vivid contrast to the rugged life to which the young couple must adjust. Jake first sends for Hattie when he has settled in Kansas, on land that has no trees, which means his home is dug out of the earth, and the fuel for cooking and for heating is “cow chips” (manure), which initially horrifies Hattie. The reaction of the locals is a source of humor in the play: The local banker wonders why Jake is asking about rabbits when he plans his wedding, and is disturbed when Jake breaks his wine glass during the ensuing ceremony.

The next generation centers around Rose (portrayed by Nadia Diamond, who switches from Emily in shorts to Rose in a turn-of-the-century floor-length dress in front of us.) Rose is visiting relatives in Brooklyn when she becomes smitten with a man she meets on the beach on Coney Island, Ben Giventer (Alex J. Gould), a handsome lover of literature who is devoted to Tolstoy, quotes Shakespeare, and writes her love poetry. Once they marry, however, Rose discovers he is a momma’s boy, and his momma, Mrs. Giventer (Joyce Cohen again), who wanted Ben to be a rabbi, greatly disapproves of Rose for being so lax in her practice of Judaism. Rose feels trapped by Mrs. Giventer, although she doesn’t want to give into her. That wordplay in Mrs. Giventer’s name is one of the few delights in an overlong episode that would be indistinguishable from melodrama except it’s not exciting enough.

The playwright clearly intends “Oklahoma Samovar”  to be a multigenerational saga in the tradition of such acclaimed works as Robert Schenkkan’s Pulitzer Prize winning “The Kentucky Cycle,”  Stefano Massini’s Tony winning “The Lehman Trilogy” and Tom Stoppard’s last play “Leopoldstadt.” But only one of the five generations in Cohen’s play held my interest; indeed, three of the five hardly make an impression: We see Hattie’s mother (portrayed by Joyce Cohen), sending Hattie off to America, then decades later we hear her, in an understandable but misguided snippet of a monologue, talk about the German occupation of Latvia. (“Tomorrow, the SS will drag me to the firing squad.”) We see Emily’s mother Clara as a child (Seren Kaiser.) We see Emily herself in a scene talking to her (unseen) mother at her 21st birthday shortly before Clara dies. The play would probably have worked better had the playwright not stretched to include these thinly developed episodes, and focused instead on deepening the story of Jake and Hattie, the frontier Jews.

Oklahoma Samovar
La MaMa ETC through December 21
Running time: 2 hours and 10 minutes including intermission
Tickets: $10 – $30
Written by Alice Eve Cohen
Directed by Eric Nightengale
Set and puppet design by Anna Kiraly, costume design by Barbara Erin Delo, lighting design by Federico Restrepo, sound design by Eric Nightengale, prop design by Qingan Zhang, intimacy and fight coordinator Jacqueline Holoway
Cast: Sarah Chalfie as Hattie and others, Joyce Cohen as Sylvia and others, Nadia Diamond as Emily and others, Alex J. Gould as Ben and others, Seren Kaiser as Little Rose and others, Sahar Lev-Shomer as Jake