CU Players spends the night in mourning

“Would you like a yarmulke for the services?” someone asks a man standing in line for CU Players’ “Grandma Sylvia’s Funeral” at the invited dress rehearsal on Thursday night. In fact, every male member of the line outside the Lerner Party Space was asked the same question, while the cast—already deep in character—mingled with audience members as if all in attendance were waiting to be seated at an actual funeral.

As director Sam Reisman, CC ’10, asserts in his director’s note, “It’s not like your regular show.” “Grandma Sylvia’s Funeral” is fully interactive—some students were even approached in line and asked to stay later for a naked audition by the creepy mortuary owner’s son Vlad (played by Michael Abraham, CC’12). From the moment they lined up outside the Party Space until they reached the bagels and cream cheese snack at intermission, the audience was completely immersed in the experience of an over-the-top Jewish family’s tipping point.

This connection with the audience, along with Reisman’s direction, is the show’s selling point. While the cast sometimes purposefully alienated the audience as a whole throughout the play, and even picked on specific individuals, the cast won over an initially skeptical audience with spot-on delivery.

Charlie Dinkin, BC ’12, delivered an incredible performance as an eccentric loudmouth whose disregard for funeral etiquette captivated the audience even during other cast members’ eulogies.
Besides the few characters sitting on stage throughout the entirety of the performance, a number of cast members were scattered throughout the seats as well, making catty comments to the audience and, at times, getting up to speak their mind.

While the play successfully reeled in most of the audience through comic timing alone, a plot so centered on Jewish tradition left a large number of the audience scratching their heads as others around them burst out laughing after the Rabbi Michael Wolf would utter some Yiddish phrase. Even at the end of the show, as pallbearers pulled from the audience formed a procession down the aisle, half the audience burst into song broken by laughter, and the other half remained left out of the joke.

While “Grandma Sylvia’s Funeral” ran a little too long, mostly due to the actors drive to stay in character as long as they could, the performance delivered a decent number of laughs. With the added bonuses of free admission and unlimited bagels, mourning Grandma Sylvia is not a bad way to spend a Friday night.