Bad Jews Kvetching Over Good Soup Off-Broadway

When Joshua Harmon’s dark comedy Bad Jews opened in the fall of 2012 at Roundabout Underground‘s 62-seat Black Box, it took the theater community by storm. A sold-out run was the impetus for Roundabout to move the production a few floors upstairs, to the 420-seat Laura Pels Theatre at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre, where it will open October 3.

In 2012, TheaterMania took Harmon and his cast — Tracee Chimo, Philip Ettinger, Molly Ranson, and Michael Zegen — on a date to the famed Café Edison, where we dined and kvetched over plates of chopped liver and their renowned matzo ball soup. We proudly re-share this story with you in time for the show’s official off-Broadway debut.

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"Can we just take a second to assess these matzo balls?" asks playwright Joshua Harmon over a bowl of soup at Café Edison.

"I love them," replies Tracee Chimo, one of the four stars of Harmon's critically acclaimed, biting dark comedy Bad Jews. "This is my favorite matzo ball soup in the city."

"They're very fluffy," Harmon concludes. "I like a more-packed matzo ball. That's what I come from. But I don't want to be misquoted: This is good soup."

"I'm open to both," interjects Michael Zegen, who, eight times a week, goes head to head with Chimo's frizzy-haired Daphna Feygenbaum as her slightly older cousin Liam Haber. "I don't discriminate."

Molly Ranson, who plays Liam's shiksa girlfriend, Melody, and Philip Ettinger, who plays Liam's brother, Jonah, have also joined us for this matzo ball soup klatch on a recent rainy Tuesday at the Edison.

It's Chimo, the only goy in the group, who ordered the chopped liver. "But I came from a very Eastern European family," the actress insists, "so food was a big deal, and the closeness of the relatives was a big deal. That's what I found most relatable in this play: I connected with the family aspect of it."

Everyone at the table nods. They specifically relate to the fighting. Harmon's play finds Daphna and Liam entangled in a dangerous, potentially relationship-ending squabble over their recently deceased, Holocaust-surviving grandfather's prized Chai necklace.

"My family is prone to arguments on every holiday," says Ettinger. "It actually makes me feel more comfortable when there's yelling going on."

"Every time my family gets together, there is a fight," Zegen adds. "I can't single out any one in particular, because they all sort of go together."

"My mom's side is straight-up, one-hundred-percent Italian, and they scream all the time," Chimo boasts. There is no talking to each other in that house. I actually don't go there very often because they're nightmares."

In this case, Ranson is the hold out. "My family is very kind of peaceful," she says between bites of stuffed cabbage. "I have a very quiet Jewish side of the family – not quiet, but they don't scream at each other."

Harmon, currently a student in Juilliard's playwriting program, insists inspiration for the comedy did not come from close to home. "It's not based on my family," he asserts. "But you pull from stuff."

In reality, it seems like he might have inadvertently pulled from Ettinger's life. "My dad actually has a Chai necklace that his grandfather wore — who actually survived the Holocaust," he says. "He wears it every day."

"And you went through every rehearsal without telling us that," Harmon scolds. "His dad came to the show and was like 'Has Phil told you about this?' and we're like 'No!'"
"And he pulls out this big Chai," Chimo adds through laughs. "And we were all like 'wow, really!?'"

Zegen relates one of his family's stories of lore. "My grandfather [who was a Holocaust survivor] discovered years after that his brother had survived [also], and then they met up, and apparently had a fight, and then they never talked to each other ever again."

But we don't need to worry about fighting at our table. In fact, the cast and playwright get along so well they're practically mishpucha [Yiddish for family]. (The night before our lunch date, they all attended the Big Apple Circus.) During rehearsals, they gathered for a dinner that Harmon cooked himself.

"Food is a tradition," Zegen adds. "My grandma and my grandfather are big into soup. My older brother has taken the mantle in that."

"My father is Albanian," Chimo shares as she spreads chopped liver onto crackers for everyone to taste. "There was a lot of Albanian and Greek food that my family ate."

Ranson jumps in to share her family's food traditions: "We always search for the matzo every year [on Passover], we put out wine for Elijah—"

Ettinger almost steps on her sentence. "So you do the Afikomen? There are two separate ways: one where you hide it from the kids and they find it, or the one where the kids steal it? That's how I grew up doing it. The kids steal it and it's like a negotiation."

Chimo doesn't get it.

"Somebody hides [a specific piece of matzo] and the kids have to find it, and you get money," Zegen explains.

"It's the silliest thing ever," Harmon notes. "You sell it back to your parents for money. You learn negotiation skills!"

Chimo finally understands. "It sounds like your version of the Easter egg hunt!"

"I used to [sing the Four Questions at Passover] every year, and I would get so nervous," Ranson says.

"I would always make my little brother laugh while he was doing it," Zegen replies proudly. "I would make faces and he would crack up!"

At this point, the waiter begins to clear plates and the conversation winds down. Since Bad Jews is a comedy, naturally the question about favorite Jewish comedians comes up.

"I like Larry David," Ranson notes.

"Woody Allen is my favorite!" exclaims Chimo.

"Sarah Silverman has an amazing joke," Harmon begins. "[She] says 'I was raped by a doctor…which is so bittersweet for a Jewish girl.'"

The entire table, save for the one who ordered the chopped liver, giggles with glee.
Chimo looks puzzled. "I don't get it," she says.

"Jewish mothers are always trying to get their daughters to marry doctors," Harmon explains.

"My mother always wanted me to marry a doctor," she replies. "Is that a Jewish thing?"