2 1/2 Jews
Play Description
A delightful seriocomedy about a prominent civil rights attorney who is a schlemiel on the home court in his relationships with his intractable aging father and budding lawyer son.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (3 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
- Reviews
- About the Author(s)
- About the Book
- Special Notes
Press Quotes
“Nathan Minter is one of those overbearing men who believe that success in their chosen professions makes them, without further effort, successful sons, husbands and fathers. As Alan Brandt sets out to demonstrate in 2 1/2 JEWS, his understanding and compassionate debut play, which bares a man’s flaws but shies from tragedy, Nathan Minter is a winner as a humanitarian lawyer but a loser in his personal relationships. Oh, his 78-year-old immigrant father, Morris, may refer to him as the ‘Jewish Clarence Darrow,’ and his Yale-educated son, Marc, may call him the ‘Albert Schweitzer of the legal profession,’ but the descriptions are drenched in bitterness … 2 1/2 JEWS, sprinkled with lighthearted moments, remains an easy-to-watch cautionary tale.” —Lawrence Van Gelder, The New York Times
“Winning hit comedy … a happy surprise.” —NY1-TV
“A triple mitzvah!” —New York Law Journal
Author(s)
Alan BrandtAlan Brandt was born in Brooklyn in 1923 and attended the University of Michigan before serving in Europe as a German language translator for the Army Signal Intelligence Unit, during World War II. He began the varied career that preceded playwriting as a publicist, representing notables ranging from Howdy Doody to Harry Belafonte. In addition, he became the lyricist for songs, including the standard "That's All." His work has been recorded by top singers, among them Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Mel Torme, and Peggy Lee. For many years, he was a dealer in tribal art and a major source of African and Oceanic sculptures contained in the museum collections at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Detroit and Minneapolis Institutes of Art, and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African Art in Washington, DC, among others. He was also a member of Actors Equity and the Screen Actors Guild. 2 1/2 JEWS, which he wrote in his 70s, was his first play. He passed away in 2002 at the age of 78.
Book Information
| Publisher | BPPI |
|---|---|
| Publication Date | 3/1/2000 |
| Pages | 80 |
| ISBN | 9780881451672 |
Special Notes
If original stage producers credits appear in bold below, all licensees are required to include them in the following form on the title page in all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play and in all advertising in which the full cast appears in size of type not less than ten percent (10%) of the size of the title of the Play:
Produced Off-Broadway by Do Gooder Productions at the Raymond J. Greenwald Theater
In addition, the following must appear within all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play:
by special arrangement with Broadway Play Publishing Inc, NYC
www.broadwayplaypub.com
Related Plays
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
Liana and Marcus have a marriage others envy. Doré has grown accustomed to an isolated existence in her modest flat. After a surprise reunion on Marcus’s 40th birthday, their worlds are shattered by an unexpected turn of events. NIGHT IS A ROOM is a searing exploration of love’s power to both ruin and remake our lives.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (2 female, 1 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00 Play Description
Considered by many to be the greatest Yiddish drama, A DYBBUK recounts the tale of a wealthy man’s daughter possessed by the spirit of her dead beloved.
Production Info
Cast: 18 total (5 female, 13 male)Full Length Drama (about 160 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Period Costumes
$11.95–$15.00 Play Description
Rural Central Texas, 1962. Dave, still lives in the old family home that his father built. The family is still the only Jewish family in this isolated country town. As his son Nathan faces the (to him) bizarre prospect of becoming Bar Mitzvah, his wife Rachel faces an even greater crisis of faith. As Dave encounters the remoteness of his community, and the even further distance from the faith of his father, his entire family faces the legacy left behind by their immigrant forebears: What do the Jews believe? This is a fictionalized account of the next generation of the family introduced in THE IMMIGRANT, and the second play in Mark Harelik’s Texas saga of one Jewish-American family.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (2 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Single Set
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
Nicki drives her 84-year-old grandmother down to Florida every year. But this year will be the last trip they take. Nano longs for the world she used to know, and Nicki is hell bent on dragging her into the present. NANO AND NICKI IN BOCA RATON is a play about the genteel anti-semitism of the South and the special way that grandmothers and granddaughters fight and forgive each other.
Production Info
Cast: 2 total (2 female)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
A boy’s best friend has died after an accident whilst cleaning his gun. It is Christmas Eve, and he talks to his friend’s father after a church service. Next day he goes to his friend’s house to give cookies to the father and the brother of the dead boy. He is soon caught up in a whirlwind of events. First they all go and see the grandmother, then they go to bail out the mother from jail, and all the time he is being used as a sounding board for a family who have not yet come to terms with the death
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (2 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 100 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$19.95 Play Description
Set in Buffalo, New York in the 1940s, ANCESTRAL VOICES is a bittersweet story, perceived through the eyes of young Eddie, whose family is turned inside out when his grandmother unexpectedly divorces his grandfather in order to marry his grandfather’s best friend. Simultaneously, the outside world is undergoing temporal changes, and we follow the family through the ensuing decades of war and social upheaval. Written to be performed informally, with actors reading from scripts.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (2 female, 3 male)Full Length Drama (about 90 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00 Play Description
Written by José Rivera, Academy Award nominee for The Motorcycles Diaries, EACH DAY DIES WITH SLEEP is the story of a young woman’s struggle to find an identity apart from the two men in her life, her father and her husband. This fantastical tragicomedy leaps from coast to coast and from one outrageous moment to the next.
Production Info
Cast: 3 total (1 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 85 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
In this gripping ghost story an eccentric librarian discovers a weather-beaten book in a return bin — 113 years overdue. Sparked by a message left in its margins, she embarks on a magical quest that takes her around the world and 2,000 years into the past. With astonishing twists and turns, UNDERNEATH THE LINTEL draws us into an unforgettable odyssey.
Production Info
Cast: 1 total (1 female)Full Length Drama (about 65 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
A promising Ethiopian soccer star in Israel is courted by an American sports agent. The athlete is involved with another Ethiopian who risks being deported. Meanwhile, there is also a reckless, clandestine operation afoot to airlift one last group of Falasha Jews from Ethiopia to Israel.
Production Info
Cast: 8 total (3 female, 5 male, multiethnic cast)Full Length Drama (about 85 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
$15.00–$15.95 Play Description
O JERUSALEM centers around an American State Department official who becomes entangled in Middle Eastern politics before and after September 11, 2001. Along the way, the protagonist encounters a Palestinian woman from his past.
Production Info
Cast: 5 total (3 female, 2 male)Full Length Drama (about 110 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes
$11.95–$15.00 Play Description
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Angels in America comes this powerful portrayal of individual dissolution and resolution in the face of political catastrophe.
Production Info
Cast: 9 total (5 female, 4 male)Full Length Drama (about 160 minutes)
Multiple Sets
Contemporary Costumes
Play Description
Simone Weil, a French girl of Jewish extraction whose death in 1943 was caused primarily by self-imposed starvation, is the subject of this striking theatrical exploration into the nature of faith and spirituality. APPROACHING SIMONE gives fascinating insights into this extraordinary woman who was later canonized as a saint.
Production Info
Cast: 16 total (6 female, 10 male)Full Length Drama (about 120 minutes)
Minimal Set Requirements
Contemporary Costumes