Handle With Care at NC Stage Co.
’Tis the season for turkey, presents, and tree decorations — also tense family dinners, gridlock traffic, and nightmarish mall crowds. For a break from all of the holiday madness, check out the utterly delightful new romantic comedy, Handle With Care, playing for a brief run through Dec. 22 at NC Stage Company.
The first script by rising playwright Jason Odell Williams is a Christmas/Hanukkah tale that’s at once familiar and strikingly original. Director Patricia Snoyer Black keeps the comedy humming along, making the 90-minute run time fly by. She also stages the actors smartly, never allowing the physical action to get stale.
The end result is a satisfying little stocking stuffer to be enjoyed in between more classic holiday fare like It’s a Wonderful Life.
Israeli tourists Ayelet (Anna Slate) and her grandmother, Edna (played with warmth and wit by Barbara Blomberg) are staying in a motel in small-town Virginia, following up on an old flame from Edna’s past. But when their trip experiences an unexpected bump and a package that’s dear to Ayelet goes missing, she must deal with Terrence (Aaron Brakefield), the hapless delivery man who lost the parcel.
But there is another problem: Ayelet speaks almost no English, and Terrence certainly doesn’t speak Hebrew (or “Jewish” as he hilariously refers to it). So Terrence, in a bit of politically incorrect resourcefulness, calls the only Jewish person he knows, a childhood friend named Josh (Ben Mackel). Although Josh speaks only a few bits of Hebrew that he learned for his Bar Mitzvah, he quickly develops a connection to Ayelet that transcends the spoken word.
Without spoiling the impressive twist ending, let’s just say that there seem to be cosmic forces pushing the young lovers together. Along the way, we learn more about Josh’s backstory, including the tragic death of his first wife, and the relationship, told through flashback, between Ayelet and her grandmother.
Anna Slate and Ben Mackel star in Handle With Care. Photo courtesy of NC Stage Co.
As a whole, Handle With Care is as adorable as a properly-tied bow. And although the humor is a bit uneven, there are some genuinely gut-busting moments, like when Josh recounts one of the only bits of Hebrew he remembers — a dirty phrase he picked up when he was 13 years old.
But the most soaring laughs come from Brakefield, who plays the sweet, bumbling good ol’ boy delivery man who “misplaces” (not loses, he insists) the package. Brakefield doesn’t hold back on the country boy persona, but he also plays it with an earnestness that prevents it from spiraling into caricature or stereotype.
Fortunately, Brakefield’s is not the only excellent performance, although it is the funniest. Mackel brings unexpected depth to the role of Josh. His portrayal of a widower, whose grief was complicated by an adjacent mass shooting that overshadowed the independent death of his wife, is deeply touching. His pain and longing makes his budding infatuation with Ayelet all the more affecting.
As for Slate, she should be given a special award for memorizing reams of phonetic Hebrew for this part, along with physicalizing their meaning so that the audience can discern a semblance of what she’s saying. Slate is a fine actor in English, but she really comes alive while spewing indecipherable (to us and the other characters) Hebrew whilst spinning around the stage like a top.
As usual, the production design at NC Stage is excellent. Scenic designer Julie K. Ross builds a flawless facsimile of a typical American motel room, although it is spacious enough for the actors to play in.
Like a glass of warm egg nog, Handle With Care is a little sugary — but in a reasonable quantity, it’s just perfect. Spiked with the right amount of humor and a heartwarming message, this is one to be enjoyed by the whole family - whatever language you speak.
Handle With Care is playing through Dec. 22 at NC Stage Company in downtown Asheville. For tickets and more information, visit ncstage.org.
(Photo: Courtesy of N.C. Stage Co.)
