This 2.5 Minute Ride Feels a Little Long

2.5 Minute Ride is a rather deceptive title for what is actually a 70-minute ride that begins in Sandusky, Ohio, passes through Auschwitz, and ends at the Canarsie Jewish Center of Brooklyn. Oddly enough, Auschwitz is the most enjoyable stop along the way.

Playwright Lisa Kron’s one-woman show presents the eccentricities, charms, and downright absurdities of her Jewish, Midwestern family, and her place in it as a gay comedian, actress, and writer. At the same time, she pays tribute to her father, a survivor of the Holocaust. Her humor, however, falls short of the originality she demonstrates in telling her father’s story.

The comic aspect of the production features the exact brand of humor one might expect from a 30-something, Jewish, Midwestern lesbian talking about her family. The combination naturally lends itself towards comedy, but not in a particularly original way. Kron’s work falls into the outplayed genre of humor at the crux of Steve Solomon’s recent production, My Mother’s Italian, My Father’s Jewish & I’m in Therapy. Though Kron’s one-liners and sitcom-ish anecdotes consistently get laughs, the humor becomes too predictable, and particularly disappointing in contrast to her innovative approach to the memoir form.

Despite the show’s comic shortcomings, Kron’s exploration of the Holocaust experience lends it integrity and value as a work of art. She assumes her father’s heavy German accent and tells the story of his first attempt to distance himself from Judaism after his parents were killed at Auschwitz. “I went to a diner and tried to order a ham sandwich,” he says. “But I couldn’t. I asked for tuna.”

It is ironic, then, that one of Kron’s greatest concerns throughout her monologue is her retelling of her father’s experience, which she fears comes across as overdone or cliché. “Why am I describing this to you?” she demands. “Is there anyone who hasn’t seen Schindler’s List?”

Actress Nicole Golden, who plays Lisa, simultaneously captures the exuberance and the self-consciousness of Kron’s work. Much like the alternation between comedy and tragedy in Lisa’s accounts of her father’s life, she vacillates between eagerness to share her story and moments of an intense frustration. At one moment she is imitating the syrupy-sweet accent of her Midwestern mother, and at the next, her voice breaks as she recounts a conversation with her father in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. She turns away from the audience for a few ominously silent moments in order to regain her composure before continuing her speech.

Golden’s monologue accompanies a series of blank slides. She describes each in minute detail, often pausing to recount a related anecdote, or slip in a witty aside through her own peals of laughter. She rattles off names and situations with a convincing familiarity that seems almost improvisational. Kron played herself in the play’s 1999 debut, leaving large shoes to fill, but Golden assumes the role with grace and ease, supported only by the empty slideshow, a stool, and one cigarette.

Overall though, the play feels a bit like attending someone else’s family reunion, where every joke is funnier to them than it is to you. Despite Golden’s likability, and despite the poignancy of the play’s tragic moments, the end comes as a relief. The audience concludes about 10 minutes into her monologue that Lisa is right—her family is funny because it is totally insane. But then, whose isn’t?