Jan Levine Thal is no stranger to the theater.
But even as a seasoned theater veteran, she still considers herself a young playwright. Thal’s third play Esther’s Descendants, her second to be produced, has pushed her and her remarkable cast in ways she never thought possible.
The show has found its home at Broom Street Theater on Williamson Street and has pushed the boundaries of dark comedy.
The show begins shortly after Esther, the mother, has died. As her children and the police officer they have called wait for the coroner to arrive, the children shed light on who their mother, an alcoholic and psychopath, used to be. At the same time, Esther’s ghost, unseen by the children, roams the stage, telling her story to the audience.
“The original inspiration for the show was that I wanted to write about children of psychopathic, emotionally-abusive parents, but to the outside world their parents appear totally normal,” Thal said. “As I started writing the psychopathic mother character, she became someone totally different. She turned into someone who had no connection to anyone at all and she used that.”
For two years, Thal worked on Esther’s Descendants and was able to receive constant, constructive feedback from her playwriting group. About seven months ago, Thal brought the play to the attention of Broom Street Theater’s artistic director Heather Renken as a potential option for BST’s upcoming season.
With the reality of a fully produced Esther’s Descendants in sight, Thal completed a final draft in time for its first reading at the theater.
“The feedback after the reading of the full play was unlike any feedback I had ever gotten before,” Thal said. “To have people respond to particular moments was so helpful. I took the feedback from the reading, went into a crazy writing coma for two weeks and that is the show you see now.”
To play such deeply dynamic characters would be no easy feat. Due to a low turnout of women at auditions, Thal decided to rewrite one of the sisters as a brother, Daniel, specifically for actor T.J. Spires. And after seeing Martha E. White at a Broom Street Theater reading, Thal decided to re-write the sister, Mimi, as an African-American woman who was adopted into a Jewish family.
Thal’s enthusiasm for her cast has multiplied tenfold since the rehearsal process began. She is constantly floored by their emotional maturity, deep connection to the show and the continual support they supply each other with.
“Not only are they all physically different, which makes a very interesting stage picture, but they’re all so nice to each other,”
While Esther’s Descendants breaks many rules of theater, Thal has one rule for the production — no kids allowed. The themes are extremely heavy, with some violent interactions between characters as well as references to non-traditional sexual interactions.
But for the adults in attendance, this dark comedy has a way of making audiences beg for more.
“We’ve had some audiences who find the subject matter too serious so they don’t laugh,” Thal said. “The majority of them, though, laugh from the moment they sit down to the moment they walk out. You never know how people will react, but hey, that’s the truism of theater.”
Esther’s Descendants is playing at Broom Street Theater Thursday, Friday and Saturday until Oct. 1.
