Congratulations to our friend, Max Michael Miller, for his featured role in "BAD JEWS" -- a comedy-drama now playing at the Long Wharf in New Haven. (For a brief while, Max was an intern @ our New York office.)

Here's another review of his show:

‘Bad Jews’ makes for good theater at Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven

NEW HAVEN >> Heirlooms, family symbols and other forms of emotional legal tender are like other investments such as real estate, stocks and bonds: Their value is abstract until they change hands. Then their importance spikes and they become teasingly tangible and, as Joshua Harmon’s play “Bad Jews” would have it, painfully elusive.

“Bad Jews,” currently galloping like a thoroughbred at Long Wharf Theatre’s Stage II through March 29, is one of those vicious plays full of nervous laughter and vividly familiar characters that, at the last quarter mile of the track, gracefully sprint past the pack of stage stereotypes they might easily run with in lesser hands.

Moreover, the play’s two domineering characters – quarreling cousins Daphna (Keilley McQuail) and Liam (Mike Steinmetz) – speak and behave so badly toward each other that if one actually removed oneself from these characters’ selfish antics, one might torch the stage and nonchalantly walk away in slow motion from the conflagration as so often happens in too many contemporary movies.

Ain’t gonna happen, as the youngsters like to say. Nasty talk and dirty fighting notwithstanding, one remains riveted, enthralled by Daphna and Liam’s passion and unconditional willingness to risk life and limb to control their recently deceased grandfather’s Chai, a gold, Hebraic icon that their “Poppy” hid from his captors as he languished in a German concentration camp during World War II.

Why the rumpus? Daphna, a senior at Vassar, is obviously committed to her Judaism and all of its causes, from embracing her Jewish name and rejecting the secular “Diana,” to pledging to move to Israel following graduation and serving in the army for five years.

The thought that Poppy’s sacred Chai would go to Liam, who defies religious tradition with flamboyant indifference, sends Daphna into physical and emotional contortions. It’s bad enough that Liam’s family showers its wealth on the boys, the prospect that Liam wants to use the gold jewelry piece in lieu of an engagement ring to propose marriage to Melody (Christy Escobar), a blue-eyed, blond gentile, overloads Daphna’s narrow mind like three bathmats in a stackable washer-dryer.

Then there’s Jonah (Max Miller), Liam’s younger brother who’d rather play video games in a bubble of isolation than get swept up in the undertow of the tsunami he’s certain will follow on the heels of Liam and Melody’s return to the brother’s Riverside Drive apartment, having missed Poppy’s funeral due to winter frolics at an Aspen ski resort. Both Daphna and Liam try to enlist poor Jonah as their first lieutenant in their war against the other, but no soap. In his quiet, unassuming way, Jonah remains his own person.

Director Oliver Butler trusts Harmon’s script and his impeccable cast, it seems, sufficiently to stay out of the actors’ way and let them run unbridled with their characters — a sure sign that he certainly did more in honing the overall performance to brilliance. Director, cast, design team — Antje Ellermann (sets), Paul Carey (costumes), Stephen Strawbridge (lights), and M.L. Dogg (sound) and Dave Bova (hair & makeup) — serve the playwright selflessly and expertly.

While the four-person ensemble performs seamlessly, McQuail’s Daphna is magnetic. One can’t stray far from her frizzy-haired, no-frill countenance long lest one miss her sticking another verbal shiv into someone’s rib with her perfectly managed smile and upbeat inflection.

For such a young performer, McQuail seems to have already mastered the subtle use of facial control and overall body language like a venerable stage actor. Never does she descend to mugging or trying to pull focus. Rather, she listens as intensely as when she speaks, whether she’s playing with Melody’s head as a cat bats around its injured prey, or looking dead into her older cousin’s eyes to measure what she considers the true depth of his spiritual depravity.

Steinmetz’ Liam matches Daphna’s determination, stubbornness and streetwise skill of manipulation (if not mutilation) pound for pound. Though she gets more words out than Liam, the gravity of his words evens out the scales. Where Daphna makes a performance of her verbal thrust and parry as well as her all-out assaults, Liam would rather not make a scene, especially before his confused, disapproving fiance.

Speaking of Melody, Escobar really nails the part of the benign outsider who unwittingly lands on top of a hornet nest. Yet, like Jonah, she proves a formidable force when shoved to the parameter of acceptable behavior. And as for Jonah, Miller really dupes the audience into believing that his reluctance to verbally or physically engage in the surrounding family warfare indicates a want of conviction. He may not wear his feeling on his sleeve, but his Jonah proves to possess a passion that’s admirable, if silent.

“Bad Jews” is 90 minutes of bad behavior and hefty acting that resonates with anyone, regardless how small or large your family. Best of all, just when one thinks one has figured out the characters and their situation, Harmon surprises us. As Noah Cross says in “Chinatown,” you may think you know what you’re dealing with, but believe me, you don’t.

E. Kyle Minor writes about theater for the New Haven Register.

theater REVIEW

What: “Bad Jews”

When: now-March 29

Where: Long Wharf Theatre Stage II, 222 Sargent Drive, New Haven

Tickets: $40-$70