Walking Charlie by Gary Morgenstein: A Very Modern Love Story

Dec 18, 2024 by Two Sues On the Aisle

By Two Sues on the Aisle, Susie Rosenbluth and Sue Weston

What makes a play Jewish? Every theater lover probably has an idea, but we suspect for playwright Gary Morgenstein, the answer lies in the work’s theme, It’s certainly true of his play, Walking Charlie, which enjoyed a reading recently at the Tank Theater in Manhattan.

Like most of Mr. Morgenstein’s material, this piece takes every modern stereotype (as well as a few classical ones) and tosses them out the window. What else can be said for a story in which the protagonist is a Black heterosexual businessman living with a white, Italian fellow he’s known from childhood and falling for a Venezuelan immigrant who understands a thing or two about accounting and has promised to keep his woodworking shop from deteriorating into bankruptcy?

Did I mention that Seth, the African American, was married to a Jew and converted to Judaism himself before she died? How about the small detail that when Seth objects to illegal immigrants shoplifting from his store, Mauricio, the formerly imprisoned husband of Alondra, the Venezuelan seeking sanctuary for her family from her home country’s totalitarian communist regime, organizes a protest, railing against the shop owner as a “white fascist?”

At its heart, Walking Charlie is a timely love story, filled with contemporary political realities. Seth, played with brilliantly understated humor by the always wonderful Arthur Gregory Pugh, loves his roommate, Joey (Jackie Kusher), who reciprocates the sentiment but can’t seem to do anything to help their financial situation beyond keeping things tidy and looking after their dog, Charlie, Everyone loves Charlie, even Alondra, played to Latina T by Judy Kuldinow, a woman thrown into impossible political, marital, and romantic turmoil. What else can be said about a wife who has fought to free her husband (Jay Rivera), only to discover he has delivered himself by betraying everything she believed to be sacrosanct?

Somehow, in the hands of director Michele Coppolino, the pathos behind the situations endured by Seth; Alondra; and her daughter, Daniella (Stefanie Zamora) never devolves into sentimental melodrama. Mr. Morgenstein has delivered characters who face the zeitgeist of our day and rise to the situation by confronting it head-on, often as the nonsense it is.

In the end, he tells us that the only solution is to follow the heart and succumb to love.