Hillbarn Theatre's 'Night of Ballyhoo' is a metaphor for all social climbing
By Keith Kreitman, CONTRIBUTOR

IT IS difficult to decide whether "The Last Night of Ballyhoo," playing at the Hillbarn Theatre in Foster City, is a comedy or a tragedy. Alfred Uhry's play is a shock-of-recognition drama; I finally decided it's a tragedy wrapped in comedy.

Although it's about an upper-middle-class Jewish family in Atlanta in 1939, it may be viewed as a metaphor for all attempts at social climbing in societies across the world, from the most advanced to the most primitive.

The play's main characters are from a group of people with a little-known history: Jewish settlers who rose to high social status in the South after the Civil War. As they attempt assimilation into an exclusive social standing, their roots rot; they even label other people from their own heritage as "the others," a term used often in the play.

The result is an in-group contempt, seen in communities around the world: lace curtain Irish vs. the shanty Irish; Germans of Prussia vs. the farmers of Bavaria; Chinese from Northern China who looked down upon the Chinese of the south, and established African-American families in the North vs. the new arrivals from the poorer South. The list goes on.

In "Ballyhoo," the German-Jewish community of Atlanta even went so far as to adopt the Christmas tree tradition. The people identified themselves more as Southern than Jewish, as the Jews in Germany primarily identified themselves as German more than Jewish before Hitler.

The show's humor derives from the family adopting the conceits of society-based wealth, including an exclusive club — for "us," not "the others" — that hosts a dressy annual Christmas ball called Ballyhoo.
Enter into this culture a young Jewish man from New York City and you have the makings of conflicts that shake up the social order of this Jewish island in the South.

Director Ann Kuchins chose her cast wisely and directs tightly at the right pace. The production benefits greatly from the authentic home setting of the period designed by Hunter B. Jameson — it's always surprising how much set Hillbarn is able to put on its rather small stage — and costumes by Mae Heagerty-Matos.

The head of the family is a successful, rational bachelor Adolph Freitag (Al Fischer), who shelters in his home his widowed sister, the socially ambitious mother-hen Boo Levy (Jackie O'Keefe) and her daughter Lala (Nicole C. Hastings), an emotionally loose cannon who, wounded by sorority life, dropped out of college to return home.
Also in residence is Adolph's widowed sister-in-law, good-natured Reba Freitag (Carolyn Ford Compton) and her daughter Sunny (Carolyn Zola), an emotionally controlled intellectual at Wellesley College who falls in love with New Yorker Joe Farkas (Anthony Silk), who was hired by Uncle Adolph.

Peachy Weil (Bill d'Agostino), who comes courting Lala from Louisiana, reveals how absurd this sub-culture had become. He's a bigot whose family's 150-year Southern roots reduce him to a stereotypical spoiled rich boy of the Old South.

"Ballyhoo" has a fascinating plot culled from Uhry's personal experiences; he also wrote the successful "Driving Miss Daisy." You needn't be Jewish to enjoy the play and to see how it reflects patterns of minorities' attempts at assimilation during the growth of this country.

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