It's Christmas 1939, and Hitler has invaded Poland and established the first Jewish ghetto in Warsaw. In Atlanta, Georgia, however, quite a different set of events is capturing the energies of a long-established family of German-Jewish descent - Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh are appearing at the première of Gone With the Wind, and the ballyhoo, an annual social event of great import to the well-heeled, is just around the corner.
This is the backdrop of playwright Alfred Uhry's The Last Night of Ballyhoo, which opened Monday at the Ottawa Little Theatre.
The play, originally commissioned to coincide with the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, won a Tony Award for Uhry and was his first play since he'd won the Pulitzer Prize 10 years earlier for Driving Miss Daisy.
And like Driving Miss Daisy, Ballyhoo deals with Southern cutlure and prejudice - in this case anti-semitism - but in this case it also deals with Jewry's willing loss of identity there, wrapping it all together in a bittersweet romantic comedy.
The Jews at the centre of the play have spent generations learning to "fit in" with their southern, largely Episcopalian, neighbours. They don't speak Yiddish or Hebrew, or adhere to customs of the Jewish faith. In face, the play opens with Lala Levy (Cindy Beaton) decorating a Christmas tree in her extended family's living room, complete with a traditional Christian star on top.
Lala's romantic infatuation with Gone With the Wind is beyond the comprehension of her mother, Boo (Caryl McKay), but not so much that she doesn't have time to fret over who will ask Lala to the ballyhoo, nor does it stop her from meddling in, and criticizing, the lives of everyone around her.
When Boo's brother, Adolf Freitag (Tom Charlebois) brings home one of his employees (Joe Farkas, played by Xavier Sotelo), a Jew of Russian descent who has just moved to the south from Brooklyn, the family's own anti-semitism - at least regarding the "other" Jew - is revealed.
The knives are further drawn when Farkas sidesteps Lala's hints that he should invite her to the ball, and later falls in love with her cousin, Sunny Freitag (Robin Guy), and instead asks her to the ballyhoo.
From top to bottom, Monday night's OLT production was first rate. Uhry's script is extremely well-crafted, serving up sober thoughts on top of sharply entertaining wit, and director Joseph O'Brien extracts every bit of emotion from his cast.
That troupe, consisting of seven on-stage members, delivered poignancy, hurt and humour in convincing and perfectly timed performances, as love eventually conquers all the subtle in-fighting, and heals the wounds.
McKay is especially commendable as Boo, a cantankerous woman with more than enought chips on her shoulder. Manipulative to the nth degree, her performance will instantly recall some busybody in every audience member's memory.
Cheryl Jackson is also strong as Boo's sister, Reba, a happy, albeit naive, counterbalance to Boo; a woman who just rides along on whatever waves life sends her way.
Guy, who shone brightly as Anne Sullivan in OLT's The Miracle Worker last season, does it again here as the aptly-named Sunny, whose disposition, along with Adolf's, makes her one of only two level-headed members of this strange family.
In short, The Last Night of Ballyhoo provides the three most important ingredients of an enjoyable production: solid acting, a script of thematic substance, and lots of entertainment.
The Last Night of Ballyhoo, by Alfred Uhry, continues at the Ottawa Little Theatre until Dec. 15. Tickets are $15 for the 8 p.m. show.