Chaiken’s Nava is a dream — Yoel's dream — come true. A woman Yoel has loved since grade school, Nava is now a beautiful, articulate, successful bread-winner who inexplicably overlooks Yoel’s incredible Farbisener routine: he treats her like a waitress, fails to tell her his plans, doesn't notice his father’s advancing dementia, doesn't even try to fix the toilet, and on and on and on. That she stays with him may be more understandable in Israel. It's not translating here. That he calls her the love of his life, yet isn’t interested in sleeping with her anymore, is a mystery the script only provides mixed answers for. If it's to be sorted out in the playing, it's not happening successfully.

Not surprisingly, Nava seizes upon a chance to renovate the house when a handyman is called in to address the ignored commode. The battle lines are drawn when Yoel, first childishly refusing to discuss it, gives an inch before returning to his refusal to budge.     

Without a viable answer to why these two are still connected, this vacuum at the center allows the secondary character of the contractor, Yigal Kadosh (Andrew Ross Wynn, a standout in A Noise Within’s As You Like It last year) stands out as such an important figure. Of course, Hasfari has given him what seems undo dimension here given some of the things he's glossed over. The pivotal character of Yoel’s mysterious older brother, for instance, is much too sketchy given that his actions are ultimately at the core of the drama. Was he married to Nava? How did Yoel’s obsession with Nava from the age of nine circumnavigate his older brother’s position?     

Kadosh arrives on the scene as if to provide comic relief, but ends up with as much definition as the central characters thanks in part to a network of subplots that feature him and his son, Ro’i, also well played by Brett Ryback. This play also takes time for side excursions into Yoel’s younger brother’s exploits (immaterial to the Yoel-Nava relationship) and the nursing home realities of Yoel’s parents (hardly essential to establishing anything).    

The parents have their own tangent about finding buried treasure. It’s not as crazy as it seems when, like so many similar messages woven into Hasfari’s script, it provides another metaphor for us: While there is gold in our pasts, we must be willing to break down our pasts in order to find it.    

CREDITS  By Shmuel Hasfari, directed by Richard Stein  WITH Joseph Cardinale, Stacie Chaiken, Jonathan Goldstein, Barry Alan Levine, Tyler Logan, Brett Ryback, lizabeth Tobias, Bryna Weiss, Andrew Ross Wynn PRODUCTION Narelle Sissons, set; Julie Keen, costumes; Tom Ruzika, lights; David Edwards, sound; Rebecca M. Green, stage management      

American Premiere  Laguna Playhouse March 27-April 29 (Opened, reviewed 3/31)