Review: CAN I REALLY DATE A GUY WHO WEARS A YARMULKE?

I'm taking a break from my usual sour diatribe to make sure you all go to see Can I Really Date a Guy Who Wears a Yarmulke? at the Midtown International Theater Festival while you still have the chance.

Yarmulke is playwright Amy Holson-Schwartz's first production, but it has a sophistication and polish far beyond that of a first-time playwright. The play follows Eleanor, a late-twenties Jewish-but-Atheistic Jane Austen scholar who struggles with her identity when she meets Aaron, a charming young pediatric cardiologist who happens to be Jewish and observant. As their relationship progresses, they delve into what each sees as the other's hypocrisy- Aaron won't flip a light switch on the Sabbath, but he'll eat un-Kosher food at restaurants and is all too happy to engage in pre-marital sex with Eleanor. Conversely, Eleanor loves bacon cheeseburgers and expounds at length on her disdain for her birthright trip to Israel, but checks the "other" box in the racial category of a grant application. There are plenty of laughs along the way as Aaron struggles to overcome Eleanor's aversion to Judaism, but Yarmulke doesn't gloss over the deeper internal battles that occur when one considers mating with someone of differing beliefs. Yes, the play is about Judaism, but I'll venture to predict that even a Zoroastrian could identify with its characters and themes.

Formally, Can I Really Date a Guy Who Wears A Yarmulke? is refreshingly old-fashioned. It has the ease and grace of a Neil Simon comedy, but with a modern bite. The dialogue oozes dry wit, and even though there is a lot of it, I never found my attention wavering. I was reminded of my own experiences back when I was first dating my husband. Though we share a religion, we were raised in different traditions, and during the first few months, we delicately felt out each others' beliefs for compatibility. We danced around issues on which we didn't agree as we got to know each others' minds. It wouldn't have made a play anywhere near as entertaining as Yarmulke, but it enabled me to really experience the range of emotions its characters feel. In our largely secular age, faith is still as important as ever in determining one's mating choices. And the onus to preserve the purity of the Jewish culture is perhaps just as strong as it was 4,000 years ago (unless you happen to have snagged the daughter of a former president, perhaps). Jewtopia exploited this to great comic effect a few years back, but Yarmulke does so with a lot more brains. Let's hope that "one season follows another" and this play gets a full run, but there are still four more performances at the Beckett Theater. Click Here for details.