Wendy Graf’s latest play, Behind the Gates, playing at the Lee Strasburg Cultural  Center in West Hollywood, is both marvelous and contentious. I found myself

mesmerized by the playwright’s work as well as by the astonishing performers, but I was also left with some trepidation. 17-year old Bethany (Annika Marks) is a troubled American Jewish teenager.

Being an adopted daughter, she feels unaccepted by her parents and rebels by resorting to sex, drugs, ditching school and whatever else she can to create havoc in her family relationship.

When her parents decide to send her on a trip to Israel, she resists, but upon her arrival in Jerusalem, she becomes captivated with the entire country; she seems to transform immediately.

Keliher Walsh - Annika Marks - James Eckhouse

 In an innocuous meeting with Rabbi Meir (Oren Rehany), Bethany is taken by his charm and by the fact that he and his family show an interest in

her, offering her solace. She begins to feel completely at home in a new world of haredim (ultra-religious Jews), changes her name to Bakol and becomes an Orthodox Jew living in Mea Shearim (a small ultra-orthodox section of Jerusalem). But even though

Bakol is comfortable in her new-found religion, her life in Mea Shearim is not the pleasant life she was seeking when she is wed to a much older man who beats her upon finding out that she is not a virgin. He beats her for not getting pregnant, and Bakol runs away and is totally lost to her parents.

Susan Leiberman (Keliher Walsh) and her husband Jerry (James Eckhouse) arrive in Israel, hire detective Ami Dayan (Steven Robert Wollenberg) in their quest to locate their daughter. They seem to run into a stone wall, and even with the help of Donald Stone (Tom Beyer) from the American Embassy, are at a loss to locate Bethany/Bakol.

Jerry gives up and returns to the States, but Susan refuses to leave without her daughter. With the aid of Shirona (Robyn Roth), Bakol’s one friend in Mea Shearim, Susan discovers what prompted her daughter to flee. When at last Bakol returns to meet her mother, they depart for America with a new-found understanding of one another. The story is extremely well-told, the actors, well-directed by David Gautreaux, are so very realistic in their roles. The set design by Stephanie Kerley Schwartz with its use of “stone” and curtains being moved back and forth worked extremely well. Sarah

Register’s costumes were apropos. The one problem I had with the play was that Graf made it appear that it might be dangerous for a young girl to go to Israel because she may end up in a situation with which she is not able to cope. As a matter of fact, someone said to me that everyone should see this play to be forewarned about sending their daughters to Israel alone and this troubled me a great deal. How many youths do you think would ever end up in Mea Shearim? However, I still have to give this Hatikva Production a high recommendation. Plays through July 3, 2010.

Comments? Write to us at: Letters@ReviewPlays.Com

Marilyn Monroe Theatre

Lee Strasburg Creative Center

7936 Santa Monica Blvd.

West Hollywood, CA 90046

Tickets and information: (323) 960-5772, or www.Plays411.com/Gates 

Photo: Ed Krieger