L ifestyle /C ulture
Playwright Watches His Work Come to Life
T H EATER
JARRAD SAFFREN | JE STAFF
WHILE IN HIGH SCHOOL
in Leonia, New Jersey, Cary
Gitter won a young playwright’s
contest, then got to watch his
show on a stage, performed by
professional actors.
The experience inspired
him to become a playwright.
It still motivates Gitter, now
34, to write. And on Dec. 11
at Temple Beth Hillel-Beth
El in Wynnewood, he got to
live that experience for the
first time since the pandemic
began. A team of actors performed
Gitter’s romantic comedy
“The Sabbath Girl” as part of
Theatre Ariel’s new season.
Theatre Ariel is a Main Line
nonprofit that puts on intimate
Cary Gitter
Photo by Michele Maloney Photography
productions of Jewish-themed
plays, usually in people’s living
rooms. But this season is playing
out in public locations due to
the pandemic and a desire to
maintain distance, according
to Founding Director Deborah
Baer Mozes. Virtual perfor-
mances are also part of the
2021-22 schedule.
Gitter’s play drew an
audience of 30-50 people for its
first Philadelphia-area appear-
ance. The playwright himself
was one of them. He came in
from Ann Arbor, Michigan, for
the show and, after it ended, he
joined the actors at the front of
the room for a Q&A.
“I was pleased,” Gitter said.
“The actors did a great job.”
Audience members, most
of them seniors, were pleased,
too. Laughter was frequent
throughout the 80-minute
show, which featured an
Orthodox Jewish man and an
Italian woman, both in their
early 30s, falling in love.
“The play was well-written,”
said Marilyn Fogel of Bala
Cynwyd. “It sounded real.”
Gitter first wrote the play
in the summer of 2017. He was
inspired by his Jewish heritage
on his father’s side and his
Italian heritage on his mother’s
side. Artistically, he wanted to
create a story that took place in
New York City.
“Like the movies I love,
‘Crossing Delancey’ and Nora
Ephron films,” he said. “Both
funny but also heartfelt and
romantic. It’s rarer on stage
than in film.”
The playwright pitched
the script to the Penguin Rep
Theatre in Stony Point, New
York, and got it produced there
in the summer of 2019. By
February 2020, it was debuting
off-Broadway. After a month-long run
in which “The Sabbath Girl”
sold out a 100-seat house, the
pandemic hit and New York
locked down. Gitter and his
wife, who were dividing their
time between New York and
Ann Arbor, moved to Michigan
full time, and the playwright
started focusing on nonstage
projects. During the pandemic, he
adapted a play into a film
script, started novelizing
“The Sabbath Girl” and got
into television writing. But he
still loves the experience that
convinced him to try writing
professionally in the first place.
And on Dec. 11, he got to
enjoy it again.
“It feels great to have a play
have a further life and different
theaters pick it up,” Gitter said. l
jsaffren@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
‘The Sabbath Girl’ Offers Relatable Story
T H EATER
JARRAD SAFFREN | JE STAFF
“THE SABBATH GIRL” by
Cary Gitter, which debuted
at Temple Beth Hillel-Beth El
on Dec. 11 as part of Theatre
Ariel’s new season, is somehow
both timeless and modern.
Gitter balances those
two qualities in a love story
between the two main charac-
ters, both in their early 30s:
Seth, a divorced Orthodox
Jewish man who has moved
out of his insular community,
and Angie, an Italian woman
who runs a hip New York City
art gallery.
In doing so, the playwright
crafts a story that is not only
timeless and modern but
relatable. “The Sabbath Girl” has two
more Theatre Ariel shows this
weekend. Even though both are
virtual, you shouldn’t miss them.
As one audience member,
18 DECEMBER 16, 2021
Alan Fogel of Bala Cynwyd,
explained after the perfor-
mance, “The Sabbath Girl”
portrays a common experi-
ence. Two people making an
unexpected connection.
It also features a conflict
that often arises after such a
connection is made. The two
people are from different
backgrounds and, as Fogel put
it, “How do they bridge that?”
Seth lives in the Upper West
Side apartment building that
Angie has just moved into.
They meet when Seth knocks
on the door to ask his shabbos
goy, who used to live there, to
help him out.
As Angie becomes Seth’s
new Shabbos goy, their connec-
tion sparks.
But the art curator, at least
for a while, can’t bring herself
to choose the Orthodox Jew
who runs a knish store over the
hot new artist she’s courting for
her gallery. Seth, on the other
hand, has trouble convincing
his sister, who runs the knish
store with him and is trying to
set him up with an Orthodox
girl, that Angie would be an
acceptable partner.
“It’s a depiction of people’s
humanity,” Gitter said.
At the same time, in a
Q&A after the show, Gitter
reminded the mostly senior
audience that Seth and Angie
are both millennials. It’s an
important detail because
their burgeoning relationship
captures a millennial conflict.
We want both the freedom
to be ourselves and the
connection that comes with
community. But how do we
balance those desires?
Seth wants to maintain
Orthodox Jewish practices
yet expand beyond his insular
community. Angie wants to
keep moving forward in her
successful career but also,
unlike in her past relationships,
find a good, reliable and rooted
man. JEWISH EXPONENT
Actors wait for the audience to file in before starting their performance
of “The Sabbath Girl” in Wynnewood Dec. 11.
Photo by Jarrad Saffren
Seth represents tradition
and the desire for more moder-
nity, while Angie represents
modernity and the desire for
more tradition. Together, they
symbolize the urge to balance
the two, and both can sense
that, in each other, they may
have found that balance.
There’s nothing more timeless
than a relationship rooted in
the spark of connection. And
modern relationships, increas-
ingly so, are vessels of stability in
stormy seas.
Gitter’s characters have the
spark. And by the end, when
they finally agree to go on a
date, you get the strong sense
they may have started building
the vessel, too. l
jsaffren@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
L ifestyle /C ulture
Netflix’s ‘The Club’ is Good, Not Great
T E L EVISION
JARRAD SAFFREN | JE STAFF
I HAVE TWO categories into
which I put quality shows.
Shows I can’t wait to watch
and shows that, as I’m watching
them, I think to myself, “OK,
yeah, this is good.”
Netflix’s “The Club,” about
Jews in Turkey in the 1950s,
falls into the second category.
Part One of the opening
season, which came out Nov.
5, has interesting characters,
a vibrant setting and richly-
crafted scenes. It’s also a
revealing history lesson on
Turkish Jewry in an increas-
ingly Muslim country.
I enjoyed the six-episode
watch. I was rooting for the
good characters, Matilda
(Gökçe Bahadır) the Jewish
ex-convict, her daughter Rasel
(Asude Kalebek), Selim Songur
(Salih Bademci) the tortured
nightclub performer and
Orhan (Metin Akdülger) the
Greek nightclub owner posing
as Muslim, to succeed.
I found the show’s moral
lesson — that people deserve
second chances — to be
valuable. Matilda, the main
character, is fresh off a prison
sentence for shooting and
killing a guy. But I just wanted
her to reconcile with her
daughter, Rasel. I never saw
her as a murderer.
Despite all of those good
qualities, though, something
was missing. “The Club”
lacked that spark that makes
you think about it when you’re
not watching, that makes you
bring it up in conversation,
that makes you want to hang
out with the characters.
It’s worth the watch, but
only if you’re looking for
something to watch.
Let’s start with why it’s
worth it, though.
Matilda is a strong and
capable woman who can get
her way even in the lowest of
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM positions, like the nightclub job
she’s forced into after getting
out of jail. Rasel is a wild and
careless late teen who suddenly
gets a mother, Matilda, just
as she starts growing into
adulthood. Selim is a charismatic
but struggling singer and
performer who successfully
pitches the nightclub on his
vision for a cabaret show. And
Orhan is an entrepreneur
with a string of failures on his
record who sees the light in
Selim’s vision.
All of these people converge
at the show’s namesake,
“The Club,” in downtown
Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city
and cultural heartbeat. The
downtown setting is shown to
be a lively and colorful strip.
Overhead shots of the club’s
street, marked by glitzy business
signs, enhance this image.
Within this resplendent and
energetic tapestry, though, is a
group of people who become
more and more important to
each other throughout the story.
Matilda, in a nerve-
wracking and then inspiring
scene, decides to be Rasel’s
mother instead of moving to
Israel. Rasel, in a heartbreaking
and then uplifting sequence,
decides to let Matilda in after
17 years away.
Selim, in a bright flash of
charisma, sells the bottom-line
businessman, Orhan, on his
vision for the show. Then later,
after Selim bails on his opening
performance, it’s Orhan who
visits his apartment to convince
him to come back.
Not all of the scenes are
this important to the story.
But most of them make it very
clear that, by the end, they have
advanced it.
In a less capable production,
the scenes run together in the
viewer’s mind. That is not the
case in “The Club.”
Finally, through this enter-
taining and interesting story,
we learn the Jewish history
“The Club” on Netflix
Screenshot From left: Gökçe Bahadır as Matilda and Asude Kalebek as Rasel in a scene from “The Club”
Screenshot of a country that is often
overlooked as a home for Jewry.
And, perhaps not surprisingly,
the outline of that history
is familiar.
As Matilda’s rabbi says early
in the season, “We’ve been
here for hundreds of years.”
But as both Matilda’s and
Orhan’s backstories explain, in
the 1950s, Turkey was starting
to become the 99% Muslim
country that it is today.
Matilda’s father and brother
end up in jail for allegedly not
paying a discriminatory wealth
tax against non-Muslims. Plus,
JEWISH EXPONENT
at different points in the story,
Matilda and Rasel consider
moving to Israel, which tens
of thousands of Turkish Jews
did around at that time. On
top of that, as Selim’s show
and the club become more
successful, Turkish officials
start pressuring Orhan to purge
the non-Muslim members of
his staff.
Today, only about 15,000
Jews remain in Turkey. “The
Club” portrays the trends that
led to that present-day statistic.
For all those reasons, “The
Club” hooked me, kept me for
six episodes and convinced me
to at least keep my eye out
for Part Two, which comes out
in January.
But its plot-driven nature
made me more interested in
learning what happened than
in living in it. And if I watch
Part Two, that will be my
reason for doing so.
I want to know what
happens in “The Club.” But I
don’t really want to go to the
club. l
jsaffren@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
DECEMBER 16, 2021
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