The Last Night of Ballyhoo

Last Night of Ballyhoo, The (1997), a play by Alfred Uhry. [ Helen Hayes Theatre, 557 perf.; Tony Award.] In Atlanta in December of 1939, Gone with the Wind is about to premiere and news of Hitler invading Poland is all over town, but the only important event for local Jews is Ballyhoo, a festival and formal dance at the exclusive Standard Club. German Jew Beulah “Boo” Levy (Dana Ivey) is desperate for her plain daughter Lala (Jessica Hecht) to get a date for the dance, especially since Lala's attractive cousin Sunny (Arija Bareikis) from Wellesley College is going with a New Yorker named Joe Farkas (Paul Rudd). But it turns out Joe is an Eastern European Jew from Brooklyn, and when he encounters snobbery and prejudice at the club, he walks out. Sunny and Joe work out their difficulties and Lala ends up marrying a well‐connected Jew nicknamed Peachy. A “well‐crafted, audience pleasing play,” it benefited by a first‐class cast (particularly Ivey) skillfully directed by Ron Lagomarsino. The play had originated at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta.

Alfred Uhry 1996

In his second play, The Last Night of Ballyhoo, Alfred Uhry explores the lives of Jewish southerners, a society that he introduced to the American theater-going public with his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Driving Miss Daisy. The setting and plot of The Last Night of Ballyhoo developed from stories Uhry heard growing up in a southern Jewish family, as well as his own experiences. As he told Don Shewey from American Theatre, “I went to one of the last Ballyhoos there was, when I was 16 — it was like a German-Jewish debutante ball.” However, Uhry also had a keen desire to explore Jewish identity, including prejudice inflicted on Jews by other Jews. Uhry combined these two interests to create the privileged world of the Levy / Freitag families. They live in a large home on one of Atlanta’s finest streets. They belong to an elite country club. Their children may attend prestigious private universities. All these trappings and conveniences of wealth, however, cannot change the fact that they are Jews who live in an overwhelmingly Christian society. The prejudice that they experience as a result of their religion does not deter them from embracing mainstream southern society or from replicating this discrimination within their own culture; German-Jews such as the Levys and Freitags look down on “the other kind” of Jews — Eastern European Jews. While The Last Night of Ballyhoo deftly explores this anti-Semitism, Uhry also intersperses his serious message with sparkling banter, comedic non sequiturs, and hilarious characters and characterization. The Last Night of Ballyhoo was first produced at the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996 and went to Broadway the following year; its playscript is available from Theatre Communications Group.

The Last Night of Ballyhoo
Written by	Alfred Uhry
Characters	Sunny Freitag Adolph Freitag Lala Levy Boo Levy Peachy Weil Joe Farkas Reba Freitag
Date premiered	February 27, 1997
Place premiered	Helen Hayes Theatre New York City
Original language	English
Genre	Comedy
Setting	Atlanta, Georgia December 1939
IBDB profile

The Last Night of Ballyhoo is a play by Alfred Uhry.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Background 3 Production 4 Critical reception 5 Awards and nominations 6 References 7 External links

Plot

The dramedy is set in the upper class German-Jewish city of Atlanta, Georgia in December 1939. Hitler is about to invade Poland, Gone with the Wind is about to premiere, and Adolph Freitag (owner of the Dixie Bedding Company) and his sister Boo and nieces Lala and Sunny - a Jewish family so highly assimilated they have a Christmas tree in the front parlor - are looking forward to Ballyhoo, a lavish cotillion sponsored by their restrictive country club. Adolph's employee Joe Farkas is an attractive eligible bachelor and an Eastern European Jew, familiar with prejudice but unable to fathom its existence within his own religious community. His presence prompts college student Sunny to examine intra-ethnic bias, her Jewish identity (or lack thereof), and the beliefs with which she's been raised.

Background

Originally a series of vignettes, each featuring a different member family of the city's exclusive Standard Club, Ballyhoo was inspired by the playwright's childhood memories. It was commissioned by the Olympic Arts Festival for the 1996 Summer Olympics and was staged at Atlanta's Alliance Theatre that year ^[1]. In revising the play for a New York City opening, Uhry opted to focus solely on the Freitags and expanded their storyline into two acts.

Production

After twenty-four previews, the Broadway production, directed by Ron Lagomarsino, opened on February 27, 1997 at the Helen Hayes Theatre, where it ran for 556 performances. The original cast included Terry Beaver as Adolph, Dana Ivey as Boo, Paul Rudd as Joe, Arija Bareikis as Sunny, Jessica Hecht as Lala, and Celia Weston as Aunt Reba.

Replacements later in the run included Peter Michael Goetz as Adolph, Kelly Bishop and Carole Shelley as Boo, Mark Feuerstein and Christopher Gartin as Joe, Kimberly Williams as Sunny, and Cynthia Nixon and Ilana Levine as Lala.

Critical reception

Ben Brantley of the New York Times observed, "Much of the gently barbed, idiosyncratic Southern humor recalls a vintage episode of the television sitcom Designing Women . . . Mr. Uhry's one previous play, Driving Miss Daisy . . . was a modest masterpiece of obliquely rendered sentimentality and social commentary. Here the author employs much more direct and conventional means that work more blatantly to elicit laughs and tears. Ballyhoo isn't a clumsy work; on its own terms, it's a model of old-fashioned tailoring. And Mr. Uhry has a fascinating and incendiary subject in the self-hatred implicit in the social stratifications among Southern Jews, particularly given that the play is set on the eve of World War II. But the context in which he couches it can feel very treacly . . . There's no doubting that Ballyhoo is a sincere, good-hearted work, but it almost never feels spontaneous. Despite its provocative subject, its form is the theatrical equivalent of comfort food, something for those who like their nostalgia repackaged in the guise of something new." ^[2]

Awards and nominations

• Tony Award for Best Play (winner)
• Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Broadway Play (winner)
• Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Play (nominee)
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama (nominee)

References

1. ^ Hippodrome State Theatre website
2. ^ New York Times, February 28, 1997

External links

• The Last Night of Ballyhoo at the Internet Broadway Database

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