A Playwright Reviews His Audience

Sep 11, 2025 by Susan Rosenbluth

By Gary Morgenstein

Playwrights live and die by reviews. For the first time in my long career, I’m reversing the scenario. I’m reviewing a Jewish audience that sat through one of my plays and allowed members to accuse me of contributing to antisemitism. Why? Because the play in question rips away the curtain on so-called “casual antisemitism” and condemns it. Oh, yes, the play is also about teshuvah—true, sincere repentance.

I know what you’re thinking: “Yeah, sure, Gary.” Right?

Just recently, in Florida, a Jewish theater held a sold-out staged reading of my award-winning drama A Black and White Cookie, which has enjoyed productions all over the country, from Manhattan to Los Angeles, and New Jersey to Maryland.

The play is about Harold Wilson, a Black Republican newsstand owner who must close his business after an exorbitant rent increase, and Albie Sands, his eccentric Jewish Communist customer, who persuades him to fight back.  But first, they have to overcome Harold’s proud intransigence and his niece Carol’s antisemitism.

You see, Carol’s father, Harold’s brother, was once cheated by a Jewish lawyer and landlord. Still bitter, she denounces all Jews as thieves who care only about themselves and money. Harold’s decision to work with Albie horrifies her.

After what could be described only as a generally positive reception to the well-acted, well-directed reading, I was eagerly anticipating the publicly announced talk-back. I was not expecting a feeding frenzy fueled by a vocal minority.

“Gentiles shouldn’t see this play,” a woman yelled. “Just the mention of crooked Jews will give them reason to hate Jews.”

What? I wanted to holler back. Because people who hate Jews need excuses?

“Why does Harold have to comment about Jews always talking about the Holocaust?” the woman’s companion chimed in.

“How come Albie eats ham sandwiches?” a third voice demanded.

Because Albie is depicted as an atheist, and the point of the play is that, no matter what he does, he’s still Jewish, and antisemitism is directed against him the same way it would be against a chassid. Woody Allen, call your office – I wanted to explain.

On and on it went. When I argued that these tropes were mild compared to real-life incidents taking place around the world, including policies spouted from the mouth of the antisemitic socialist poised to become the next Mayor of New York City, a few members of the Florida audience attacked me for not respecting Zohran Mamdani’s views, “which,” they claimed, “many Jews share.”

Okay, you may well ask, why does my review pan the entire audience when only a few engaged in this diatribe? The whole audience gets a thumbs down because no one took my side. No one. What happened to all those people who’d been laughing during the reading? Who stood and applauded?

Although as they filed out of the theater that night, many Jews said very quietly how much they loved the play, I couldn’t help asking each of them silently: Where were you when it mattered?

I didn’t need any of them to defend me. I’m from Brooklyn. And I already did my job. I wrote the play. But the audience is always an equal partner in making theater magic as they sit in the dark and eavesdrop on flawed characters in their most vulnerable moments. Every playwright worth his or her salt calls on the audience to be open-minded and willing to consider a different perspective. Constructs such as an African American Republican or a homeless Jew are non-clichés that turn the usual comfortable narrative upside down, striving to help the audience get past the polarizing stereotypes that infect our society.

A good audience, one that deserves rave reviews, can’t shut out unpleasantries. To reach redemption, the play must showcase the sin. That’s the whole point.

In the case of A Black and White Cookie, it means shining a light on antisemitism, on all prejudice. The goal is to make good people—Jews and Gentiles—blink, helping them see there is more that unites us than divides us.

That recognition would have won my Florida audience a five-star review. Instead, I give them one—for coming to the theater in the first place, sitting through the whole play, and reacting appropriately—until they didn’t.