Lauren Yee — the playwright also responsible for “King of the Yees” at Signature Theatre and “Cambodian Rock Band” at Arena Stage this season — crafted her Jewish folklore-inspired tale to begin not with the hatmaker or the benign, mud-modeled monster who visits him, but with the more mundane life of a young couple fleeing the bustle of the big city. When we meet the dorky, lovable Gabe (Tyler Herman, who also plays Golem), and the prophetically named Voice (Ashley Nguyen), the cracks in their relationship are already apparent: He’s ready for commitment, and she’s a high-strung safety manual copy editor with ambivalent feelings for the beau she’s chosen for his lower-than-average “douchebag quotient.”
Luckily, she’s come to the right place to explore that trepidation. Voice’s new house “called to her,” she says, which soon takes on another meaning when the Wall (a hilarious Alex Tatarsky) begins speaking in its Jewish-mother-tone (“Wall knows all!”) about the home’s past residents, conjuring a hatmaker and his long-neglected wife. Part vaudeville and part ghost story, the play comes alive in step with the house.
The hatmaker is Hetchman (played in riotous, larger-than-life caricature by Maboud Ebrahimzadeh), a formerly successful craftsman whose days consist of eating canned nuts and binge-watching a television program about the end of the world. He’s shrunk into a sedentary, selfish life — so much so that he’s forgotten the name of his wife (a perfectly rumpled Sue Jin Song) of six decades.
When she runs away with his beloved hat, a ghastly red fedora (she may have been doing him a favor), his concern is more focused on its whereabouts than hers. Along with the mysterious golem, we also meet Hetchman’s friend and neighbor Meckel (a jolly Michael Russotto), who has the burdensome task of humanizing the hatmaker through gags such as clogging his nose with a clothespin (since Hetchman smells foul in his wife’s absence) and hugging Hetchman to stop him floating away from a lack of grounding affection.
Those are a few examples of the playful elements that define Yee’s 2014 story, whichmight cross a line from whimsical to childish, depending on your point of view. Its magical realism, however, is the lens through which director Dan Rothenberg (also co-artistic director of Philadelphia’s Pig Iron Theatre Company) explores the story’s more serious themes of depression, obsession and the myriad ways we love (including getting sick of each other at precisely the same time).
Also prominent is the idea of home, especially as it relates to the Jewish diaspora and immigrant stories of the middle of the 20th century. What does it mean to grow up unmoored, with a lost connection to the people and culture that’s supposed to help define your identity? This question makes for a bittersweet ending to “The Hatmaker’s Wife,” which otherwise has joyfully low stakes: a new home, a lost hat and plenty of laughs.
The Hatmaker’s Wife, through June 25 at Theater J in Washington. Approximately 100 minutes with no intermission. edcjcc.org.
