2006-05-22 friedman family fortune

By Cynthia Citron

SHERMAN OAKS, Calif.—In the hands of really fine actors, a play reading can be every bit as absorbing as a fully staged play. Sometimes even more so, since a reading is presented without the distractions of scenery, costumes, and props. Like old-time radio, where you had to fill in the blanks with your own imagination. Remember?

Such absorbing play readings are consistently to be found at the Jewish Community Centers in Sherman Oaks and in West Los Angeles, mostly because the charming and talented producer/director Alexandra More has the ability to persuade some of the finest actors working today to flesh out her well-chosen theater works.

Such as? Ed Asner, Millie Slavin, Alan Feinstein, JD Cullum, and Lisa Glass, along with Narrator and Dramaturg Arnold Weiss, who recently proffered David Gow’s engrossing drama, “The Friedman Family Fortune”.

Asner and Slavin played Sol and Annabelle Friedman, a couple married so long that they express their affection by bickering. He, a self-made mogul with a chain of food stores, is the prototypical Type A businessman, issuing orders at the top of his lungs and brooking no disagreements. She, the hovering wife, has devoted her life to keeping him from exploding in an apoplectic fit.

Their daughter Stephanie, read by Lisa Glass, is a single, 37-year-old MBA who bemoans the fact that she has served “an apprenticeship nearly into my 40s.” It is time, she believes, for her father to step aside and let her revitalize the company. But “You can only modernize a head of lettuce so much,” Sol protests.

He would rather leave the company to his son Geoffrey, a moderately successful artist who has fled to the west coast, presumably to escape just this contingency. JD Cullum reads this role with just the right mixture of deference and disdain. “You think you’re a giant magnet at the center of the universe, responsible for gravity and tides,” he accuses his father.

But Sol has other problems besides the business. His blood pressure, his heart, and his memory are all giving out. “You find egg on your tie and you can’t remember when you ate the egg,” he complains. But he still has the energy to go for a “shvitz”—a steam bath—with his long-time friend and loyal aide, Edgar, solidly played by Alan Feinstein.

The plot thickens with the introduction of an impending board meeting, stock options, power manipulations, sibling rivalry, and family confrontations, but the real focus of this entertaining dramedy lies in the personalities of the participants and their ever-shifting relationships. For in the end “The Friedman Family Fortune” is a love story. Satisfying and filling. And real. And impeccably presented by a superlative ensemble cast.

This particular program was the last in the spring series, but a new monthly Celebrity Play Reading Series begins in September with “Brooklyn Boy," followed by “Benya the King” in October, “Modern Orthodox” in November, and “Half and Half” in December. Each program is presented twice: on Saturday night at the Friends of the Valley Cities Jewish Community Center, 13164 Burbank Blvd., in Sherman Oaks, and Sunday afternoons at the Westside Jewish Community Center, 5870 West Olympic Blvd., in Los Angeles. For program dates and reservations, visit www.westsidejcc.org.