Prayer for the French Republic | 3hrs 10mins. Two intermissions. | Samuel L. Friedman Theatre | 261 W. 47th Street | 212-239-6200
We want playwrights processing current events, right? Artfully, skeptically, subversively, just so long as they cast our thoughts beyond the walls of the theater. Joshua Harmon certainly rises to the challenge in his sober and passionately argued Prayer for the French Republic, about a Jewish family shaken by a rise in European antisemitism circa 2016-17, as France’s voters decide between Emmanuel Macron and far-right candidate Marine Le Pen. Besides its recent-ish setting, the drama’s relevance is unavoidably evergreen, a reflection of periodic resurgences of global Jew-hatred, from the Middle East to America’s Ivy League. Even so, Harmon’s play seems uncannily prophetic after the atrocities of October 7 and the appalling bloodshed that has followed. When his Benhamou clan finally resolves to leave Paris for Israel, their exodus seems less a run to freedom than a slouch toward unimaginable horrors.
Prayer premiered Off Broadway at Manhattan Theatre Club in early 2022, a distinct warning cry less than four years after the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. That domestic terrorist attack was alluded to in the script, but the reference has been scrubbed from the Broadway version, also produced by MTC. Perhaps the edit is to keep the play’s resonance open-ended, to soften an inevitable on-the-noseness. The line in question was spoken by Patrick, a man who considers himself French first and........