Chaim Potok was an incredibly gifted writer. "My Name Is Asher Lev," an intricate story of conflicts in morality and social acceptance versus personal desires, is one worth telling to an audience.
But Aaron Posner's adaptation of Potok's novel, now playing at the Lyric Stage Company of Boston, does a rather clunky job of bringing Potok's narrative to life.
"My Name Is Asher Lev" follows the life of a boy born into a Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn, the only son of two very complex parents. When he discovers his talent and passion for art at the age of six, conflicts between his values and the traditional values of his parents and his community immediately begin to surface.
From the beginning, it is a little too obvious that the play is an adaptation of a written narrative. A considerable amount of time is taken for Asher (Jason Schuchman, LA '99) to set up for the audience exactly what the nature of his community is - where the play is set, who his parents are and what their relationships are like. There is far too much telling instead of showing.
The first segment of the play follows Asher as a young boy, and the constant back?and?forth between narrator and child seems awkward at times. The narrative and pace pick up, however, as Asher matures and his story becomes more complicated. When his father leaves for Vienna and he stays behind to be mentored by a famous artist in Manhattan, the intrigue increases.
The fundamental problem with the first half of the play is that it is simply overwrought. Tension and emotions run high and are represented in borderline melodramatic ways through a combination of misguided writing and plaintive acting. As the pace and plot pick up, though, the play's humor and emotions begin to make sense and become more believable.
As the show progresses, the conflict that Asher's parents face between having specific goals for their son and wanting him to be happy becomes more fleshed out and intriguing, and the audience is sufficiently pulled in and rewarded.
There are several instances of well?done adaptation from novel to stage. For instance, starting when he is a child and weaving throughout his life, Asher recalls nightmares he has of the looming shadows of his ancestors, which are exacerbated by the domineering presence of his father and the omnipresence of the Rebbe in the community. Asher's tales of these nightmares are accompanied by clever shadow work offstage, offering moments of successful adaptation from book to play. By lifting a very visual scene from a narrative and showing it aesthetically, the play does an excellent job of adding to Potok's story.
Another clever moment is when Asher's father (Joel Colodner) sits down to lecture his teenage son about his responsibilities and their mutual exclusion from painting. It is a brilliant scene, with the father stoically delivering his wisdom while Asher gets up from his chair and circles his father. Asher tells the audience, "I was listening, but I was also wondering 'how can I draw that fire?'" It is a poignant moment well?rendered in physical form in a way the novel cannot do.
The three?person cast of "My Name Is Asher Lev" performs well in this complicated and uneven piece. Though the narrative is still perhaps most comfortably at home in the written word, Posner's play provides a thoughtful rendition that deserves to be seen.
