A few minutes into “Becoming Eve,” an inventive, sympathetic Off Broadway play produced by New York Theater Workshop at Abrons Arts Center, Chava (Tommy Dorfman), a college student, executes an abrupt costume change. Though she bursts onto the set, the makeshift sanctuary of a synagogue on the Upper West Side, in a cropped pink sweatshirt and flowered minidress, she soon runs into a side room and emerges in loose jeans and a drab, body-camouflaging hoodie. From her original look, only a pair of pink sneakers remain.
Even this outfit (Enver Chakartash designed the costumes) is daring in its way. Chava was raised in a Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn. So if these jeans are comparatively modest, they remain far more modern than the clothes that Chava grew up in, which were men’s clothes. Chava is trans, and she has arrived at this sanctuary to come out to her father, Tati (Richard Schiff), an ultraorthodox rabbi.
“Becoming Eve,” written by Emil Weinstein and directed by Tyne Rafaeli, is based on Abby Chava Stein’s memoir of the same name. In her 20s, Stein left her community and her religion, then she came out as trans. (Stein has since returned to Judaism, and is a rabbi at a progressive congregation in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn.) Though mostly set within that sanctuary (designed by Arnulfo Maldonado, with dramatic lighting by Ben Stanton), the play also includes flashbacks of Chava as a child and adolescent and as a young husband. In these sections, Chava is played by a series of puppets (expertly designed by Amanda Villalobos and deployed by two puppeteers). Dorfman, standing nearby, voices these scenes.
Because Chava knows that her father lives untouched by the modern world (with heavy restrictions on the internet and most media) and that he is allergic to sentiment, Chava has found biblical commentary that seems to argue her case. To help her, she has enlisted Jonah (Brandon Uranowitz), the chatty, empathetic rabbi of this progressive synagogue. The play allows for heady scriptural dialogue, which speaks to Weinstein and Rafaeli’s faith in the audience’s intelligence. (One reasonable concession: These Yiddish conversations are rendered in English.)
But the show is perhaps too intellectual and careful. Weinstein and Rafaeli, in a laudable effort to be fair to all, exercise perhaps too light a touch. (Regarding the women in Chava’s life, Judy Kuhn as her mother, Mami, and Tedra Millan as Fraidy, her wife, that touch is feather light; they are given little to do.) There are no villains here, no victims, which seems right and yet it results in a reticence that extends to Dorfman’s performance.
That reticence may reflect a particular moment in Chava’s transition, her comfort at this point in her own body. Or perhaps Stein herself is really this subdued. Mostly it implies an unusual degree of caution and sensitivity on the part of the production team. But it means that Chava never appears as faceted as Uranowitz’s anxious, charismatic Jonah or Schiff’s Tati, a particular mix of emotionalism and restraint. Only late in the play, when Dorfman allows a rare flash of anger, does a more complicated Chava emerge.
Still, these weaknesses are relatively minor. And why kvetch? In a moment when the current administration is seeking to deny the lived experience of roughly 1.6 million transgender Americans, a play with the compassion of “Becoming Eve” is a welcome tonic, served in a Kiddush cup. It is perhaps not a surprise or a spoiler to say that Tati cannot fully accept Chava as Chava (the real Stein remains estranged from most of her family). But in arguing for the full and essential humanity of all the characters, “Becoming Eve” demands our humanity in return. That’s a mitzvah.
Becoming Eve
Through April 27 at Abrons Arts Center, Manhattan; abronsartscenter.org. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes.
Alexis Soloski has written for The Times since 2006. As a culture reporter, she covers television, theater, movies, podcasts and new media.
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