IF I FORGET


A long-simmering family feud fuels Steven Levinson’s hilarious and harrowing off-Broadway tragicomedy If I Forget, dazzlingly reconceived for the Fountain Theatre by director Jason Alexander.

The folks in question are the Fischers of Washington DC, still helmed in the year 2000 by recently widowed 75-year-old patriarch Lou (Matt Gottlieb), whose precarious health has his three adult children returning to the family home in an attempt to determine what’s to be done about Dad and, equally importantly, what to do about the property that once housed the family business and is now being rented out cheap.

Eldest sibling Holly (Valerie Perri) would like nothing better than to turn it into her very own interior design enterprise, no matter that her only experience in the field has been redoing the house she shares with her well-off husband Howard (Jerry Weil) and their mopey teenage son Joey (Jacob Zelonky).

Youngest Fischer sibling Sharon (Samantha “Sami” Klein), a partnerless kindergarten teacher about to turn forty, refuses even to consider Holly’s plan, not if it means kicking out the Guatemalan family that runs it as a bargain store.

Caught in the middle is Jewish Studies professor Michael (Leo Marks), whose dream of tenure may now be in jeopardy due to his about-to-be-published book Forgetting The Holocaust, in which he maintains that our obsession with “The Six Million” has manipulated “all of us, our entire lives, to feel constantly victimized, constantly afraid,” and turned contemporary Jews from champions of liberal causes into supporters of “the right-wing allies of Israel.”

Further complicating matters is Michael and his shiksa wife Ellen’s (Síle Bermingham) college student daughter Abby, whose history of instability has Michael worried that her “heritage” visit to Israel may be putting his troubled child in both physical and mental harm’s way, just one of several reasons Michael would prefer to sell the family property for the millions it’s now worth.

All of this has contributed to a decidedly volatile family reunion about to be complicated even further by secrets and lies that won’t remain unrevealed forever, at least not once Act Two rolls around.

Religion, national and international politics, freedom of speech, mental illness, gentrification, family loyalties, Internet scams, Zionism, elder care, adultery, and the 2000 presidential election and its consequences…

Playwright Levinson packs a lot into If I Forget’s two-and-a-half hours (not counting intermission), no small challenge to a director and cast, though the number-one obstacle in transposing Levinson’s play from a 424-seat New York house to the 99-seat Fountain may have been its scenic design requirements. (The off-Broadway production featured an upstairs-downstairs revolving-stage set.)

Director Alexander’s inspired solution has been to turn If I Forget into a memory play unfolding in a family attic crammed with piles of discarded furniture and shelves filled with assorted family paraphernalia.

Not only that, but Alexander keeps all but one of the characters onstage throughout the play as if the walls had eyes and ears, and the remaining family member, only talked about in Levinson’s script, becomes an actual physical presence, exquisitely performed by Caribay Franke to assistant director Allison Bibicoff’s mesmerizing dance moves.

If I Forget may not read as particularly funny on the printed page, but thanks to Alexander’s Emmy-winning gift for comedy and an all-around fabulous cast, its Fountain Theatre incarnation explodes with an abundance of laughter, making its seamless transition to dramatic mode all the more gut-punching.

Seinfeld’s “George Costanza” has elicited one superb performance after another, in particular those delivered by Marks (whose quicksilver brilliance is something most actors can only dream of) and Perri (a SoCal musical theater superstar giving her stage brother every bit as magnificently as she gets without singing a note).

Klein’s justifiably aggrieved Sharon, Bermingham’s caught-in-the-middle Ellen, Weil’s still-waters-run-deep Howard, and Gottlieb’s declining but still vital Lou do uniformly remarkable work, and promising newcomer Zelonky sulks so teen-typically as Joey that an eleventh-hour meeting with Uncle Michael proves unexpectedly moving.

Last but not least, scenic designer Sarah Kranin, lighting designer Donny Jackson, sound designer Cricket S. Myers, costume designer A. Jeffrey Schoenberg, and properties designer Katelyn M. Lopez have joined creative forces to striking effect in designs truly unique to the Fountain.

If I Forget is produced by Stephen Sachs, Simon Levy, and James Bennett. Barbara Herman is executive producer. Shawna Voragen is production stage manager and Lexie Secrist is assistant stage manager. Andrea Lopez is prop assistant. Scott Tuomey is technical director.

Plays don’t get much meatier or more thought-provoking than Steven Levinson’s If I Forget, and few productions are as memorable as the Fountain Theatre’s latest. If I Forget ought not to be forgotten when awards season rolls around.

The Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Ave., Los Angeles.
www.FountainTheatre.com

–Steven Stanley
July 29, 2022
Photos: Jenny Graham

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