L ifestyles /C ulture
Act II Playhouse Puts ‘Dr. Ruth’ on Stage
T H EATER
SELAH MAYA ZIGHELBOIM | JE STAFF
HOLOCAUST ORPHAN.

Israeli sniper. Sex guru.

There aren’t a lot of people
who can be described with that
particular trifecta, but one who
can is Ruth Westheimer, the
pop culture icon more com-
monly known as Dr. Ruth.

Her life story, told in
Becoming Dr. Ruth, is now on
stage at Act II Playhouse in
Ambler, where it will continue
its run until Feb. 17. The Feb. 14
show is the community part-
ner night, when a portion of
ticket sales will go to Temple
Sinai Sisterhood.

In the play, a 69-year-old
Ruth Westheimer (she is now
90) tells the story of her life to
the audience, from her child-
hood fleeing Nazi Germany to
her present day as a renowned
sex therapist.

“What she lived through
in one life, 10 of us have not
lived through,” said Drucie
McDaniel, who stars as
Westheimer in the 90-minute
one-woman show. “But she
didn’t allow it to defeat her. She
always used it as something
to buoy her up to something
higher, and it was always about
helping other people.”
Westheimer was born
Karola Ruth Siegel in 1928
Germany to a Jewish fam-
ily. At the age of 10, she left
Germany on a Kindertransport
to Switzerland. Her parents
died in the Holocaust.

After the war, she immi-
grated to Israel and joined the
Haganah, where she learned to
be a sniper. She also spent some
time in France.

By the time she immi-
grated to the United States,
Westheimer had already been
divorced. She had to navigate
her new life in New York as a
single mother.

Despite those obstacles, she
flourished. She earned several
18 FEBRUARY 14, 2019
degrees and married a third
time. And, of course, she was
given her own radio show,
which launched her career as a
sex therapist.

“It’s not just called Dr. Ruth
or The Dr. Ruth Story. It’s
Becoming Dr. Ruth,” McDaniel
said. “All the circumstances of
her life, the good and bad, are
what ultimately gave rise to the
person that she became.”
Like many, McDaniel grew
up seeing Dr. Ruth’s famil-
iar face. She was like a Betty
White — an old, sweet lady
who “talked dirty and would
surprise you,” McDaniel said.

So when McDaniel learned
more about Westheimer’s past
while working on this produc-
tion, “all of it” was a surprise.

The play
opens in
Westheimer’s apartment,
where she has lived for decades.

Westheimer is planning to
move to a new home, and as
she packs up the apartment,
she comes across objects that
spark memories of her past.

Tony Braithwaite, the artis-
tic director at Act II Playhouse,
said one-person plays work
well in the playhouse’s small
theater, so he is always looking
for those kinds of shows. He
decided to stage Becoming Dr.

Ruth after reading the script at
someone’s suggestion.

The story of Westheimer’s
life amazed him, particularly
the fact that she fought in
Israel’s War of Independence.

“That blew me away,”
Braithwaite said. “She’s 4-foot-
7, for God’s sake.”
Braithwaite, along with
Director Dan O’Neil, audi-
tioned dozens of actresses for
the part of Dr. Ruth.

But that actress would need
to fill some very specific shoes.

Audiences would have
a clear image as to what Dr.

Ruth should look and sound
like, so they needed some-
one who was short like her
and could pull off her accent,
which is described as German/
From left: Ruth “Dr. Ruth” Westheimer and Drucie McDaniel,
who plays Westheimer in Becoming Dr. Ruth
Drucie McDaniel as Ruth Westheimer
French/Israeli/American. “[McDaniel is] not doing an
exact recreation of Dr. Ruth’s
voice,” said O’Neil, who was
a student of McDaniel’s at the
University of the Arts. “She’s
not doing an exact impression.

She doesn’t look exactly like
her, but she’s done a really good
job of capturing the essence
of Dr. Ruth.”
McDaniel said that there
are challenges to playing a real
person that playing a fictional
character does not have.

“You don’t want it to just be
an imitation,” McDaniel said.

“You also need to pay homage
to the actual person. You just
want to do it honor, and that’s
a responsibility.”
Westheimer came to see
the show the first night of
the preview — unbeknownst
to McDaniel.

Braithwaite decided to keep
Westheimer’s presence in the
audience a secret because it was
McDaniel’s first night perform-
ing the show in front of a public
audience, and he didn’t want to
JEWISH EXPONENT
Photos by Bill D’Agostino
make her more nervous.

After the perfor-
mance Braithwaite
got on stage and let
everyone, particularly
McDaniel, know that
Westheimer was there.

McDaniel’s jaw
dropped when she
found out.

Westheimer joined
her on the stage, told
McDaniel she had
done a great job and
asked the audience
for questions.

“She was remarkable, so
kind to me and just so gener-
ous and loved our production,”
McDaniel said.

McDaniel said she imag-
ined that Westheimer thought,
when she asked the audience
for question, that they would
have a therapy session. Instead,
the audience wanted to know
more about her life.

At one point during the
Q&A, Westheimer said she
used to talk about her experi-
ence as a Holocaust survivor to
combat deniers. Now, she wants
to combat Holocaust fatigue.

“So much of the play is
about her being a survivor,”
Braithwaite said, “a literal sur-
vivor of the Holocaust but also
a survivor in general, if you
know what I mean. She says at
the end of the play — she holds
up a picture of her grandchil-
dren — and she says, ‘When
I look at them, I know that
Hitler lost and I won.’” l
szighelboim@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0729
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



L ifestyles /C ulture
‘The Chosen’ Themes Endure 50 Years Later
JED WEISBERGER | JE STAFF
RENA POTOK BELIEVES
she has inherited her famous
father’s literary traits, including
ability with the written word,
analysis and character empathy.

The daughter of Chaim
Potok, a resident of Merion for
much of his life, who became
one of America’s most-loved
Jewish writers prior to his 2002
death at 72 from brain cancer,
had many enjoyable sessions
with her dad.

“My father audited some of
my classes when I was going
for my doctorate and it was like
having another teacher,” Potok
said. “At the Shabbat dinner
table, instead of discussing
Talmud, we’d discuss my dis-
sertations. It was fun.”
The Chosen was Chaim
Potok’s most-acclaimed novel,
selling 3.4 million copies and
being translated into several
languages. It was made into a
movie directed by Jeremy Kagan
in 1981 and developed into a play
by Aaron Posner in 1999.

And it will be the centerpiece
of a Gershman Philadelphia
Jewish Film Festival program
at 6 p.m. on Feb. 17, at the
National Museum of American
Jewish History.

The play ran for a month
in 1999 at the Arden Theatre
in Philadelphia. It also ran at
the City Theatre in Pittsburgh
and won the 1999 Barrymore
Award for best new play.

“Aaron really helped my
father with all aspects of the
play,” said Potok, an adjunct pro-
fessor at Villanova University.

“He was fortunate to work with
some good people.”
The 1981 film, featuring
Maximilian Schell as Professor
David Malter, Rod Steiger as
Rebbe Issac Saunders, Robby
Benson as Danny Saunders
and Barry Miller as Reuven
Malter, will be shown. Potok
will answer questions from the
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM audience and talk
about a new book,
The Collected Plays
of Chaim Potok,
which she edited
and contributed
an introduction.

Kagan will be
available for ques-
tions via Skype.

“The Chosen
really typifies my
Rena Potok
Photo provided
father’s theme in
a lot of his works
of core-to-core culture con- the messiah can
frontation,’’ Potok said. “He give the Jews a
grew up in a strict Orthodox homeland, while
house with his parents not the
modern wanting him to read books by Orthodox are
non-Jewish authors.

thrilled with the
“He felt some of that grow- aspect of a Jewish
ing up. With The Chosen, first homeland.

there was the novel, then the
The core-to-
movie, then the play and, as core clash also
one would expect, the adap- occurs individu-
tations are a bit different per ally with Danny
areas of art. But the core-to- and
Reuven, core confrontation — tradition with Reuven’s wanting to
versus modernity — theme is date Danny’s sister, Shaindel
present throughout.”
Saunders, and being told he
The plot of The Chosen, set can’t because she already
in Brooklyn from 1944-50, has an arranged marriage.

features two Jewish teenage Meanwhile, Reuven, who aims
boys. The Chasidic Danny is to be a rabbi, takes Danny to
expected to succeed his father his first-ever movie. A newsreel
as rebbe of the Saunders’ comes on showing the Nazi
small sect, and the modern
Orthodox Reuven is the son of
a liberal college professor and
ardent Zionist.

The film spotlights the
differences in the way the
Chasidic group looks at world
and Judaism with how the
modern Orthodox view the
same matters. The boys origi-
nally meet in a baseball game
in which Danny hits a line
drive back at Reuven, who was
pitching. The ball breaks his
glasses and injures his eye.

“In that time period, a lot
of things happen,” Potok said.

“The core-to-cure culture clash
is how the two groups want
things to be. After World War
II ends, and the subject of the
creation of Israel comes up,
the Chasidic sect believes only
THE LOOK
F IL M
JEWISH EXPONENT
and does not talk to him at any
other time.

“Danny is a brilliant kid,
with a photographic mem-
ory,” Potok said. “The rebbe
believes because of that,
Danny will have no feeling or
empathy for people. Teaching
through silence turns out to be
successful, as Danny becomes
a very sympathetic psycholo-
gist in the The Promise, which
my father wrote as a sequel
to The Chosen. So much my
father experienced when he
was young went into these
books. He gave so many their
first understanding of the
Chasidic world.”
The two boys suffer through
a few other rough patches
because of the core-to-core
confrontations between the
Chasidic system of beliefs and
the modern way of thinking
with the same beliefs. After the
two boys begin to attend Hirsch
College, a Jewish University,
Danny decides to transfer to
Columbia University to study
psychology and appears, not in
Chasidic black, but in a mod-
ern suit as the film ends. l
camps, which the Chasidic
contingent had no knowledge
of, and leaves the rebbe and his
followers terrified.

Another feature of the film
is how Danny is treated by his
father. Except when he and the
rebbe are studying Talmud, the jweisberger@jewishexponent.com:
father invokes “The Silence” 215-832-0737
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