A Funeral, an Heirloom, and What It All Means: A Review of ‘Bad Jews’ in New Haven

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If looks could kill, no one would survive long in Daphna Feygenbaum’s company. A senior at Vassar, she’s supersmart, superconceited and super-self-righteous. And she has no compunctions about flaunting her utter contempt for the lesser beings who cross her path, throwing them hostile glances and baleful stares. In “Bad Jews,” the corrosive comedy by Joshua Harmon at Long Wharf Theater’s Stage II, the objects of her scorn are her cousins, Jonah and Liam, and Liam’s latest non-Jewish girlfriend, Melody, whom Daphna rightly if rudely describes as having the appearance of something conceived in a Talbots store.

These four have converged on a New York studio apartment after the death of the cousins’ grandfather, a Holocaust survivor they called Poppy. But this is not your typical college crash pad, despite the open sleeper-sofa and the two blowup mattresses on the floor and the dorm-ready outfits designed by Paul Carey. The stylishly decorated studio — credit the set designer, Antje Ellermann — is in one of Manhattan’s pricier neighborhoods, and even the bathroom has a river view. The place was bought for Liam and Jonah by their doting parents, and Daphna, played with venomous intensity by Keilly McQuail, can barely contain her outrage at their sense of entitlement. But as we soon find, she feels no less entitled, and with all their emotions heightened by grief, this is not going to be anyone’s idea of a fun sleepover.

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The quotations posted in the theater lobby give an accurate preview of the territory Mr. Harmon’s play will be visiting. There’s “A family reunion is an effective form of birth control,” from Robert A. Heinlein. And “Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city,” from George Burns. You don’t have to be Jewish to appreciate such sentiments, or to enjoy Mr. Harmon’s evident talent for vituperation. And non-Jews will recognize even the deeper undercurrents roiling this particular family, trying to strike a balance between honoring its past and accepting its future. But the war — the very uncivil war — that breaks out in “Bad Jews” is pretty parochial.

At stake is a chai, a religious charm that Poppy managed to conceal from the Nazis and wore on a chain around his neck after his liberation from a concentration camp. The gold pendant, shaped like the Hebrew word for life, is too small to be worth much as jewelry. But its symbolic value is immense, and both Liam and Daphna are desperate to inherit the keepsake.

As the one member of the family who practices their religion, Daphna feels that only she deserves it. Liam, strong and sharp as played by the excellent Michael Steinmetz, has other plans for it; and Jonah, in a beautifully nuanced reading by Max Michael Miller, just wants to stay out of the crossfire — quite understandably. So did I. And for a brief time, so does Melody, portrayed with sweetness and wit by Christy Escobar. But by the end of this one-act, 90-minute show, directed by Oliver Butler, even mild-mannered Melody can take no more of the familial sniping, and when she joins the fray, she proves she can be every bit as bad as the bad Jews.

“Bad Jews” inevitably makes you wonder what Mr. Harmon’s definition of a good Jew might be. But he’s not particularly interested in answering that question. He’s content to wring laughs from the manifestly unfunny situation. Even Melody’s name and her treble-clef tattoo turn out to be the setup for a joke that Ms. Escobar delivers with exquisite precision. Daphna’s nastiness, underlined by Ms. McQuail’s exaggerated performance, at times makes her seem a cartoon figure. And the overall comic tone in no way prepares the audience for the somber revelation at the end. But “Bad Jews,” a hit in 2012 when it was first presented off Broadway by the Roundabout Theater, has been extended at Long Wharf, attesting not only to the high production standard but also to the undeniable fact that one man’s funeral is another man’s joke.