Jewtopia perfect for Broadway by Milla Goldenberg

Jewtopia: Self-hating Jews strike it big!’” laughs Sam Wolfson, one half of the writing team that produced the runaway stage hit Jewtopia, when asked what the tagline to this article should be.

“How about, ‘Hey Christians, Jesus was a Jew, too!’” chimes in Bryan Fogel, the other half, with a hearty laugh of his own.
The two are joking, of course, as they seem to do every time they are around each other. Watching the duo play off one another, it’s hard to believe they’ve been friends for only a few years. At the same time, it’s easy to see why their collaboration was so successful. Their rapport is relaxed and respectful, like that of two Jewish old ladies sitting on the front porch kvetching after a lifetime of friendship. But Wolfson and Fogel are two Jewish men in their early thirties who kvetch in their own creative way.

“Once we started brainstorming on this, we realized that as two neurotic Jews with 30 years of family shit behind us, there was a lot to write about,” Fogel says.

With the writing finished, the duo enlisted the aid of director Andy Fickman, who won a slew of awards for his direction of the marijuana musical Reefer Madness.

The very funny fruit of their labors is Jewtopia, a farcical examination of modern American Jewry that has been playing to sold-out audiences at the 99-seat Coast Playhouse since May. It will continue its run through the end of the year.

The story follows childhood friends Chris O’Connell (played by Fogel) and Adam Lipschitz (Wolfson) who run into each other at a Jewish singles mixer, where the Irish-Catholic O’Connell is posing as a Jew to find that special Jewish woman who will help him live a life of least resistance by making all his decisions for him. Lipschitz, conversely, is there because his family keeps pressuring him to do the same, though his tastes lie everywhere but with Jewish women. Together, they embark on a symbiotic mission which has Lipschitz teaching O’Connell what he needs to know to survive the interrogation of a Jewish mother and O’Connell showing Lipschitz the inherent hotness of Hasidic girls.

Critics from the Los Angeles Times, Variety and even NoHo>LA have lauded the play as a hilarious romp through Jewish culture, citing its irreverence and wit. But director Fickman attributes the play’s success to something far less sophisticated: “There are a lot of friggin’ Jews in L.A. — by my count, close to a billion or more. That’s a lot of Jews. And we all know that when Jews aren’t counting the world’s money or controlling the liberal media, they love to take a little downtime and see some theater. So we were bound to score a direct hit with our audience.”

It’s this kind of self-deprecating, ribald humor one can expect from Jewtopia, whose goal is not to shatter stereotypes, but to celebrate them. “It’s two hours of laughter,” Fogel notes. “And everybody ultimately is laughing at the truth, laughing at themselves. They’re laughing, ‘Oh, my God, this is me; this is my family.’”

Which is certainly true, as any Jew worth her kosher salt can find something undeniably familiar in the play’s Jewish mother who’s expert at doling out guilt trips, the Jewish-American princess (“JAP”) who’s more interested in diamonds than true love, the nice Jewish boy who loves his mother and seems like he’ll never cheat on you.

Wolfson estimates that out of the 18 published reviews for Jewtopia, only two have been negative. “Everybody just loves it,” he says. “And then we’ll get that two percent that think we are evil, that we are going to hell, although we don’t believe in hell, I don’t think.” (No, you don’t.) Wolfson reads from a recent e-mail: “I saw your play and found it extremely obnoxious. You made Jews look worse through stereotypes than they sometimes act.”

And sometimes the criticism hits a little closer to home — especially when it comes from home. Both Wolfson and Fogel’s mothers asked them to change certain elements and lines of the play so it would be a little less “offensive.” They refused to change a thing. Wolfson’s mother was particularly bothered by the play’s advertising campaign, which spoofs other popular ad campaigns such as “got milk?” (Their ad reads, “got Jew?”) In one ad featuring a white yarmulke with a blue Nike symbol on it, the words “Just Jew It” appear along the bottom. “My mom calls me,” Wolfson recounts with a laugh, “and says, ‘Just Jew It’? What does that mean, ‘Just Jew It’? Does that mean be cheap?!”

But Fogel argues that anyone who’s offended by the production is taking it the wrong way. “We wrote the play from a love of Judaism. I love being a Jew. I’m totally proud of who I am — albeit I haven’t gone out with a Jewish girl in maybe 10 years and I never go to services and I’m a really bad Jew and I eat shrimp and lobster and everything else — I’m very proud culturally of who I am,” says Fogel, who only describes his pre-Jewtopia existence as “struggling.” (Wolfson, who is currently dating a Jewish girl, worked as a freelance writer for TV commercials.)

Although the playwrights insist they had no specific message in mind when writing the material — “just cheap laughs,” Fogel says — they did want to address evolving views about Judaism and, perhaps most importantly, they didn’t want to center their Jewish story around the Holocaust, which they say often pigeonholes Jews as a suffering people incapable of pulling themselves out of their past.

“Our generation is saying, ‘Hey, is this so important? Can’t I just be proud of who I am? Does it matter that I love a [non-Jew]?’” Fogel says. “And the parents and grandparents are saying, ‘Our people died; we’ve been persecuted. Don’t you want to fight for what that is?’ And that’s what our show is — that clash between the old and new worlds.”

Fogel says this modern-day clash is present in all cultures rooted in tradition, and it’s this universality that draws diverse crowds to Jewtopia. On any given night, members of all races and religions can be found in the audience and to help them feel more included in what can’t help but be a distinctly Jewish experience, the playbill provides a glossary of Yiddish terms “for bad Jews and gentiles.”

And as far as the future of Jewtopia goes, there’s talk of eventual sequels, sitcoms, spin-offs and major motion pictures, but first the production will begin a nationwide tour early next year, courtesy of the New York-based Road Company, which is booking 700 to 1,000-seat venues for the production in such cities as San Francisco, Chicago and, eventually, New York.
Wolfson and Fogel will likely go on the road with the production for six months before retiring to write Jewtopia’s sequel. And as far as seeing a traditional Jewish wedding in either of their futures, the duo remains as ambiguous as the characters they play. “It’d be nice to settle down with a Jewish girl eventually,” Fogel says, “but who knows what will happen?”
In the meantime, they’ll settle for contributing to the Jewish culture in the only other way they know how — through their comedy.

“We hope people walk out [of Jewtopia] feeling good about being Jewish, not bad,” Wolfson concludes.