Dramatic fireworks explode when a 26-year-old New York-based graphic novelist is summoned back to the family home in Dennis Danziger’s powerful autobiographical three-hander The Brothers Abelson Since 1942, a guest production at Venice’s Electric Lodge.

Not that Benny Abelson (Jonah Robinson) has all that much of a career to leave behind in The Big Apple, given that his “cartooning” only pays about 70% of his bills with his parents subsidizing the rest.

No wonder then that it’s to Benny and not his more successful married-with-children Yale Ph.D.-graduate older brother Malcolm that his mother Miriam (Wendy Hammers) has turned in time of need.

And Mom has good reason for demanding a break from a home life that’s become impossible the past eighty-one days since hubby Isaac (Rick Zieff) and his brother Raphael sold the family business with nary a word of warning to wife or sons.

“He lives in his bathrobe,” moans a desperate Miriam. “Doesn’t go out the front door. Over and over he repeats the same mishegoss. Like a broken record,” which is why Mom has decided to hightail it out of “this nuthouse” and down to Florida for a month of R&R with her sister and leave Benny to attempt to succeed what she and countless bottles of prescription meds have failed at, making Isaac himself again.

Whether or not Benny will accomplish this is open to question, and that’s assuming he even agrees to leaving his New York City life behind.

With its early 1970s setting, it’s perhaps no wonder that The Brothers Abelson feels a lot like a play from that era (Frank D. Gilroy’s 1964 Pulitzer Prize winning three-hander The Subject Was Roses comes to mind), and I mean that as a compliment.

Not only has playwright Danziger written a trio of meaty roles (two of them for actors of an age not usually gifted with star vehicles like Isaac and Miriam) but a family drama guaranteed to keep audiences guessing as to what could possibly have sent Isaac Abelson into a tailspin and whether a seemingly broken father-son relationship can ever be repaired.

Director Matthew Leavitt proves himself every bit as adept at traditional “kitchen sink drama” as he has at screwball comedy (The $5 Shakespeare Company) or reinventing Hamlet, and he elicits all-around splendid work from his cast of three.

Zieff’s unkempt, unmoored Isaac is precisely the hot mess that would drive even the most loving wife up the wall. Hammers avoids “Jewish mother” cliches in her grounded, richly layered star turn as Miriam. And Jonah Robinson, fresh from his triple-threat turn in The Civility Of Albert Cashier, gives his more seasoned costars a run for their dramatic money as Benny. (An eleventh-hour scene between father and son is a tear-inducing power-puncher.)

Scenic designer David Offner and props master/set dresser Jane Hamor give the Abelsons a period-perfect kitchen set (including a functioning fridge and seemingly freshly baked mandel bread) that’s been impressively lit by W. Alejandro Melendez, with additional design kudos shared by Nick Neidorf (sound) and Hannah Schatzle (costumes).

The Brothers Abelson Since 1942 is produced by Sami Kolko and presented by executive producer Madge Woods. Andy Zikari is stage manager.

Era-and-religion-specific The Brothers Abelson Since 1942 may be, but you don’t have to have lived through the 1970s or be Jewish to find yourself drawn into its characters’ lives and invested in the Abelsons’ search for healing. For a World Premiere play, it already feels rather a bit like a 20th-century classic.

Electric Lodge, 1416 Electric Avenue, Venice. Through March 2. Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00. Sundays at 2:00.
www.abelsonplay.com

–Steven Stanley
February 2, 2025
Photos: Sofia Riccio

Tags: Dennis Danziger, Los Angeles Theater Review, The Electric Lodge